Elton John - Home Again
A stately and understated preview of album number 30.
THE FIRST TRACK TO emerge from Elton's 30th studio album suggests that The Diving Board (due in September) will pick up where 2006's The Captain & The Kid left off. Since hitting on the rejuvenating formula of less-is-more with 2001's Songs From The West Coast, Elton's solo records have been wisely cut from the same country-confessional cloth as that first, majestic flurry of LPs he recorded in the early '70s. Home Again (not satisfied with simply channeling Carole King sentiment, Bernie Taupin's gone and borrowed one of her song titles too) follows suit, its melancholic pining made all the more pretty by sparse piano and lashings of compressed analogue authority from producer T-Bone Burnett, who returns after overseeing Elton's success with Leon Russell on 2010's The Union.