 Elton John Following the Elton John discography is hard enough without trying to figure out the logic behind a release like this one—exclusive to the Target department store chain, this excellent live EP is one of Elton's best releases of the '90s, akin to Live in Australia and the awesome Believe EP. Yet it's so low profile that when I saw it at Target (I had gone there to seek Star Wars action figures and contact lens solution, by the way) I had to stare at it for a couple minutes before I realized it was in fact a new release and not a shameless repackaging of previously-avaialble material. Nope, sure enough, it's all-new, 6 tracks recorded January 15, 1998 at the Ritz in Paris, just Elton and his quasi-piano (the one that sort of sounds like a piano and sort of sounds like an electric piano and sometimes sounds like a synthesizer— has he used a real piano in the past two decades? Or is it just the way it's mic'ed? Ah, who cares?) running through six Elton classics. It's great, go get it. The track listing mixes established classics with recent singles, brilliantly revising the Elton canon of classics much the same way that the Live in Australia album made people reassess what they thought the best Elton songs were. "Daniel" is given a great reading, thankfully free of the island-music flutes on the studio version (it's a great song, but, in its original form, very dated sounding). Elton can't hit the high notes anymore but sings with strength and meaning. "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" and "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word" follow, proving my theory that those songs are statistically bound to appear on all Elton John releases, but even though these are pretty overplayed songs, these versions are great, and besides, we at the Loud Bassoon have been clamoring for an Elton "unplugged" album for years—only to find a pretty damn good one at Target, right across from the tampons and pet food. "Something About the Way You Look Tonight" is next, the single that got forgotten when that Princess died in the car crash, and sure it's 90's Elton, but that's a comfortable thing, right? Then, just when you think this will be an all "safe AOR hits" affair, he tears through a nine-and-a-half-minute version of "Take Me to the Pilot" that could almost be on the raucous 4-17-70 album—really cool, great version of a deserved classic. The disc ends with my favorite Elton song (one of my favorite songs by anybody, in fact), "The Last Song," given a graceful reading that isn't quite as great as the one on the Believe EP, but pretty sparking in its own right. A beautiful song that makes me all weepy almost every time, and one of the few "message" or "issue" songs that rises above its subject matter (it's about a man who finds reconciliation with his father as he is dying of AIDS)—really, it's not so much of an "issue" song as just a great song that springs off an issue. Elton's writing has seldom been as personal and affecting as on this song, and he performs it beautifully here, even with that synthy-piano. Typically of Elton, he has this "throwaway" out on the market simultaneously as his new collaboration with Tim Rice, Aida, which features the likes of LeAnn Rimes, the Spice Girls, et al. Maybe the ploy is to get people to the point where they can't distinguish the good from the crap. Ah, I see now why it's a Target exclusive.
Review by James Explosion |