Elton John - Madman Across The Water (Deluxe Edition) (1971/2022) (CD-Rip)

Elton John before his mid-'70s cloudburst of success is a fascinating aural adventure. After the tentative first step of Empty Sky, the muscular songwriting strength of Elton John, the countrified experimentalism of Tumbleweed Connection and the live energy bursting through 17-11-70, Madman Across The Water, now reissued with demos and live tracks for its 50th anniversary, is the first album in what would become an amazing four-year run of varied, resourceful, and artfully brilliant collaborations between John and Bernie Taupin. The pair's trajectory from this point shot skyward into considerable wealth and ever-expanding notoriety.
But as John/Taupin efforts go, the highly produced and manicured Madman is also a tale of two records. On the surface there are the obvious, irrepressible hits "Levon" and "Tiny Dancer" that are polished to a high gloss, and like the rest of the album, feature Paul Buckmaster's string arrangements (sometimes to a detriment). But beyond those two tracks, this may be John's moodiest album thanks to darker songs like the title cut with its complex and masterful arrangement, ARP synthesizer, and some of Taupin's most obscure phrases, and the gloomy lament "Goodbye," which closes the album. And in most other hands, a song like "Indian Sunset," with its overserious and occasionally embarrassing lyrics, could come off as a hackneyed and naively racist tribute to Native Americans, but is partially rescued by John's impassioned singing. Madman is less essential than Honky Château or Goodbye Yellow Brick Road because of low points like the lesser melody of "Holiday Inn," the overproduced massed voices of "All The Nasties," or the impenetrable lyrics of "Rotten Peaches," which seem to tell the story of picking "devil fruit" in...

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