Recensioni Wonderful Crazy Night

Wonderful Crazy Night
review by Mat Snow, Mojo magazine

****

Love is like...
...his old Joanna. forty years on the piano playing pop collossus lives up to the hype.

Forty years ago EJ was a superphenomenon, acounting for 2% of all record sales worldwide. No one had been that big since The Beatles. But was he as good? The ebony & ivory Herculeshad also a less welcome army of nay sayers.Irritated that such a performer-more sparkly showman than anything else, could so effortlessly outsellsuch cool and righteous artists such as Bowie, Jonie and even stevie at his absolute peak.
Time and the levelling down of the playing field has since reduced Elton to one among several pop institutionsin the sunset of their careers still earning but no longer blockbusting.
Yet being so overblown decades back now makes it hard for him to get a fair hearing beyond his loyalists.
If any album were to change all that, it should be this, his 33rd. Though Candle In The Wind will remain his most famous song, the mawkish aspect of the singer it represents is merely a tip of a far more exuberant iceberg.
Though also produced by T Bone Burnett, in contrast to it's solemn studio predecessor "The Diving Board", WCN serves Elton Sunny Side Up, where even in minor key mode his high spirits burst through.
Clearly he is in a happy place, and that finds joyous expression not just in the generally strong songs but in the old joanna. like thoseother cheeky chappie national treasures Rick Wakeman and Jools Holland, the reason Elton is in our faces in the first place is because he is a wonderful pianist. And he he really plays-gloves off and swinging with a delicous New Orleans roll., exemplified in looking up's hyper catchy staircase of notes. Only Nigell Olsson's brisk but foursquare drumming hobbles the downright funky album itchy to get out.
Other highlights include the title track, finding Bernie Taupin in scintillating form and the bonus track echoing both Lennon and Bowieas they were when he outsold these maverick pals.
If it's material is the best since 2001's SFTWC , the new album is a far better listen, thanks to Burnett's happy medium between ye old analogue and today's pop sound. And to these ears Elton's latter day upright baritone improves on the classic model. Indeed, if you don't have a great nostalgic investment in TC, GYBR, CF et allyou might well assess WCN as by no means their inferior. If you love pop, you really have to hear it.

The Art Desk

http://www.theartsdesk.com/new-music/cd-el...ful-crazy-night

2 stelle

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since Elton John famously jumped onstage at a 1973 Stooges gig in Atlanta dressed as a gorilla and almost gave the drug-addled Iggy Pop a heart attack. While the Godfather of Punk is still playing the wildman when he hits the stage, it’s fair to say that the ennobled Elton has slowed down somewhat.
Elton John has, of course, long embraced sobriety, family life and Disney soundtrack appearances and anyone hoping for a David Bowie-like radical reinvention of his easy-on-the ear shtick is going to be disappointed. Wonderful Crazy Night is Elton’s 32nd album and it doesn’t rock any boats. It’s largely middle-of-the-road fare that treats modern Disney-type tunes with a hefty wash of soft country rock, guided by the production of T-Bone Burnett. This will no doubt please large amounts of his longterm fans but it really doesn’t have much to recommend it to new ears.
“Looking Up” with its “Spirit in the Sky”-like opening and honky tonk interludes suggests that Elton and his song-writing partner Bernie Taupin might still have something interesting to bring to the table and “In the Name of You” also injects a bit of spirit, despite some seriously banal lyrics. Apart from these highlights though, we are treated to the nursery rhyme country music of “Tambourine”, the soppy balladry of “A Good Heart” and a title track that suggests that really wonderful crazy nights have not been on the cards for Elton for a good while. The album then closes with “The Open Chord” which seems to borrow heavily from both the strings of Enya’s “Orinoco Flow” and the melody of “Safety Dance” by 80s one-hit wonders Men Without Hats. Instead of the promised wild night out, this album is more of a quite evening in.

BOSTON GLOBE

https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/201...OnzK/story.html

There is something irresistible about Elton John’s unbridled joy on his 33rd studio album, “Wonderful Crazy Night.” If some of the songs aren’t as robust creatively as the British pop-rock legend’s enthusiasm for them, you can certainly hear and feel him giving his all in a way that is typical of his rollicking live performances.

Reuniting with co-producer T Bone Burnett — who worked with John on his 2010 collaboration with Leon Russell, “The Union,” and his darker-hued 2013 album, “The Diving Board” — and bringing members of his veteran touring band back into the studio for a fast and loose recording session had a measurable effect on the songs’ energy. The playing throughout is dynamic, mad genius Ray Cooper’s inventive percussion flourishes in particular, and John approaches his piano with a clear pep in his step, both tempo-wise and in some of the more mellifluous interludes.

Where the proceedings tend to break down, when they do, is in longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin’s lyrics. “Blue Wonderful,” for instance, features some of the most lilting musical sounds on the 10-track collection (12 if you shell out for the deluxe edition). But as John rhapsodizes about the pools of a lover’s eyes, lines like “I dive in, I dive deep, I just swim” feel clunky and corny.

Taupin is stronger and more in his element with one of the album’s peaks, “I’ve Got 2 Wings,” an ambling, countrified narrative about a Southern preacher finding his “sonic church.” Everything great about the John/Taupin partnership can be found in this gem of a song, which harks back to their early ’70s work as they build a character with words and chords. They mine that rootsy territory again on the warm, sentimental closer, “The Open Chord,” and in the surge and swing of “In the Name of You.”

Elsewhere, John is up and rocking on the opening title track, which recalls a wilder time not with nostalgic wistfulness but with a kind of buoyant musical laughter. The fast-talking, Billy Joel-esque “Claw Hammer” finds John in a playful mood, as Taupin writes of breaking down the walls of a button-downed soul.

John and Taupin have long passed the point of having anything to prove, and if “Wonderful Crazy Night” doesn’t offer much in the way of instantly gratifying pop hit-making, it’s got craft and joie de vivre to spare — which for artists of their vintage is admirable in its own right.

SARAH RODMAN

ESSENTIAL “I’ve Got 2 Wings”

PANORAMA

www.panorama.it/musica/elton-john-t...-la-recensione/

(molto positiva)

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BOSTON HERALD

www.bostonherald.com/entertainment/...ful_crazy_night

(molto negativa)

Elton John has sold 250 million albums. That tops the Rolling Stones, U2 and Taylor Swift. But his last record — 2013’s “The Diving Board” — didn’t even go gold here in the States.

Millions love John; only thousands want to hear anything new from him.

Other artists in this position have used it as a chance to make music without concerning themselves with commercial viability. (See: David Bowie, Johnny Cash.) But Elton adores mainstream pop and throwback Top 40, and he delivers plenty of it on his new LP “Wonderful Crazy Night.”

Thankfully, and not atypically, John adds occasional arty touches to his ballads and show-tune-like rockers on album No. 33. He closes “In the Name of You,” a midtempo tune that balances his fondness for folk and Brill Building, with an unexpected outro full of fusion horns and jazzy piano runs. With lyricist Bernie Taupin, John winks at his epic ’70s compositions with “A Good Heart.”

However, so much, too much, of “Wonderful Crazy Night” features John and Taupin at their most mediocre. If you love deep cuts from such albums as “The One” or “Blue Moves,” you’ll find enough predictable ditties to please you — try the country rocker “Guilty Pleasure.” But this T-Bone Burnett-produced affair doesn’t have the grit, energy or pathos to sit on the same shelf as “Honky Chateau.”

Rolling Stone
4 stelle

(Penso un testo della recensione più bello di così non potevano scriverlo come accompagnamento a questo disco...)

BY DAVID FRICKE February 5, 2016

The singer revisits the wild feeling of the early Seventies on a bright, uptempo album


Elton John opens his 32nd studio album by looking back in delight. "Some things you don't forget/Some things just take a hold," he sings with relish in the title song, a jaunty recollection of lasting love at first sight. The music framing that glee – "Loose clothes and a cool, cool drink/A greasy breeze from the chicken stand," conjured by John's lifelong lyric partner, Bernie Taupin – is retrospective too. John's roller-coaster piano figure and R&B solo evoke the glitter-gospel charge of exuberant early-Seventies songs like "Honky Cat" and "Crocodile Rock." John, 68, has rarely strayed far from that template. But there is a striking vigor and engagement here, especially for an artist of his vintage. He animates Taupin's images as if they are his memories, with convincing, grateful zeal.

Wonderful Crazy Night is the latest stage in an extended return to form for John – his third straight album with co-producer T Bone Burnett after 2010's The Union, a sublime collaboration with Leon Russell, and 2013's The Diving Board. Where the former LP was designed as a tribute to an idol and the latter was heavy on pensive balladry, this record is closer to the swing of moods and earthy hues that marked John's early classic LPs such as 1970's Tumbleweed Connection and 1972's Honky Chateau. "In the Name of You" moves in creeping time to a bluesy piano riff doubled by Davey Johnstone, John's longtime guitarist. Johnstone also chimes in, literally, on "Claw Hammer," brightening its swampy aura with Byrds-like 12-string guitar. In "A Good Heart," John and Burnett turn the pleading in Taupin's lyrics into a Beatlesque spin on Southern soul with a coat of horns that could have come from Abbey Road.

There is a loose, earnest theme running through most of these songs. The exception, "I've Got 2 Wings," is an effectively restrained country-church tribute to the real-life Louisiana preacher-guitarist Elder Utah Smith, written by Taupin as a first-person memoir from heaven (Smith, who died in 1965, notes the years he spent in an unmarked grave). Everything else – the jangling surrender in "Blue Wonderful"; the liberating certainty of "Looking Up," with its chopping-piano gait; the allusions to flirting and deliverance in "Tambourine" – examines the hard work of maintaining paradise on Earth: the confession, reassurance and unconditional giving. The songs routinely summon comparisons to John's greatest hits; it's easy to imagine "Tambourine" sliding onto 1973's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

But there is a matured pacing and weight to the music and John's vocal performances that make this record one of his finest in its own right. Wonderful Crazy Night is about what happens after those loose clothes and cool drinks. The final tally: It's all worth it.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/02/05/elton...night-ew-review

B-


New albums from heritage rock stars are often a risky gamble: for every masterpiece like David Bowie’s Blackstar, there are underwhelming records from Neil Young (2014’s preachy Storytone), Lou Reed (2011’s ridiculed Lulu), and Pink Floyd (2014’s dreary The Endless River). Elton John has bucked the trend and enjoyed a late-career revival: his 1994 soundtrack for The Lion King earned numerous accolades, spawned the most successful musical ever, and made him relevant to a new generation of fans. But while he’s had a consistent, prolific output since — 2010’s T-Bone Burnett collaboration The Union and 2013’s back-to-basics The Diving Board stand out— John’s 32nd studio album, Wonderful Crazy Night, is a mixed bag.

During many moments here, the 68-year-old retains the charisma and performing chops that have defined his career. On “Looking Up,” he serviceably updates the riffage of “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” only this time with a slick Hall & Oates-style sheen. And the Elton John Band (returning for the first time since 2006’s The Captain & the Kid) adds swagger to “In The Name Of You”—it almost sounds like a lost outtake from 1972’s Honky Chateau. Sure, by-the-books rockers like the title track are forgettable, but John’s zeal keeps the energy pulsing throughout. And the gifted pianist can still save mediocre songs with a little bit of his keyboard magic, which he does on the otherwise bland “Guilty Pleasure.”

But Goodbye Yellow Brick Road this ain’t. “Claw Hammer” begins with an intriguing hook, but tanks when John busts into a maudlin chorus better suited for a Vegas show. The schmaltzy ballad “Blue Wonderful” finds John cycling through key changes, only to never find one that works. And on the album closer “The Open Chord,” John delivers longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin’s cringeworthy line, “You’re an open chord I wanna play all day,” as orchestral strings pluck away in the background.

Rollicking arrangements conceal lackluster songwriting on Wonderful Crazy Night’s more upbeat cuts, but when the tempos slow, John’s music suffers. Still, his voice is intact (which is more than some of his peers can say) and his showmanship still shines. Nearly five decades after he revolutionized what it means to be a rock star, John’s boundary-pushing days may be long gone, but the sun hasn’t gone down on him just yet.

Recensione di RS Italia
2 stelle

www.dropbox.com/s/u3iisct3w1lwtmk/RS%20Italia.jpeg?dl=0

ROCKOL

3.5 stelle

http://www.rockol.it/recensioni-musicali/d...ful-crazy-night

Nell’immaginario, Elton John rimane per molti il cantante pop, il divo bizzoso. E la copertina di “Wonderful crazy night” non fa nulla per smentire quest’immagine: visibilmente dimagrito, sorriso contagioso, occhialoni bizzarri, sfondo colorato. Ma è un’illusione ottica.

E’ curioso che Sir Elton venga a presentare questo disco al Festival di Sanremo - dove si verificò, 21 anni fa, una delle sue più leggendarie scenate: narra la leggenda che Elton rimase imbottigliato nel traffico tra l’aeroporto di Nizza e la città ligure, e decise di tornare indietro, per la disperazione dei discografici che lo stavano accompagnando. Baudo poi raccontò di averlo cacciato lui (non era vero, ma Baudo era Baudo). La sala stampa venne informata all’ultimo; alcuni quotidiani, che avevano già chiuso le pagine, uscirono raccontando un'ospitata che non c’era stata.

Elton John non è più quella star viziata da molto tempo, ormai. O, meglio, non lo è del tutto. Certo, rimane un personaggio pubblico molto in vista, oltre la musica: è un paladino contro l’omofobia (impegno che lo ha portato a recenti e violenti scontri anche con politici italiani), e i giornali di gossip indagano volentieri su di lui.
Ma sulla musica si è rimesso in carreggiata da molto tempo. “Wonderful crazy night” è la chiusura di una seconda trilogia. La prima, quella della rinascita, era cominciata con “Songs from the west coast” (2001), e il riavvicinamento ai suoni e allo spirito di capolavori come “Tumbleweed connection”. La seconda è cominciata con “The union”, il disco a 4 mani con Leon Russell del 2010, e proseguita con “The diving board”. Questa seconda trilogia ha un deus ex-machina, uno dei più grandi produttori americani, T Bone Burnett, alla consolle anche in questo album.
“Wonderful crazy night” è però, per certi versi, il disco più debole di questa trilogia. Elton John ha detto di aver voluto incidere un disco rock ’n’ roll, ed è vero: è un disco decisamente più allegro dei due precedenti, più intimisti, ma anche più intensi.
Qua ci sono tante chitarre, quelle del collega storico Davey Johnston: sono spesso in primo piano, con avere una predilezione per la 12 corde, che compare in diversi canzoni come “Blue wonderful”, “Guilty pleasure”, “Claw hammer" e fa molto anni ’60. La mano di T Bone Burnett si sente soprattutto nell’impasto dei suoni, e in qualche raffinatezza, come il finale piano e fiati di “Claw hammer”, o l’organo che apre “Looking up” prima del piano quasi honky-tonk. Tutti piccoli tocchi che evitano a Elton John di sbracare, o di fare canzoni troppo caciarone. Anche se il modello di riferimento di “Wonderful crazy night”, in sostanza, rimane più “Crocodile rock” che “Madman across the water”.
Il risultato è un buon disco pop rock, dai suoni pulitissimi, accessibile e godibile anche chi ha seguito solo in parte le vicende musicali di Elton negli ultimi anni e vuole un disco diretto e divertente.