Elton John #11: Blue Moves (1976)

After the frantic pace of writing, recording, and touring that Elton John and company had undergone for pretty much the past six straight years, the languid Blue Moves feels like the artist forcing himself–and us–to slow down.  Stretched across two discs, with most of its songs in the five-to-seven-minute range, it’s a marked contrast from the tight, pop-focused albums he’d been recording for the better part of the decade.

Blue Moves was mostly poorly received by the music press at the time, with writers criticizing its length, pacing, and its seeming self-seriousness.  While its esteem has grown slightly over the years, it’s still not held up as one of his best.  The album marked the end of John’s #1 record hot streak, but still sold fairly well, reaching #3 on the American charts, likely carried there on John’s lingering goodwill.

Honestly, I think those are fair criticisms, but I still found myself enjoying Blue Moves a great deal.  Where John’s last double-album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road felt a bit like a well-stocked jukebox, bouncing from one style to another at a breakneck pace, Blue Moves feels deliberately slow, striking an intimate, melancholy mood and largely staying in it for 80-plus minutes.  Many of its best moments are its minor-key ballads, like the eight-minute lovers quarrel “Tonight,” the stirring gospel-soul of “Chameleon,” or the aching “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word,” the album’s first single and one of John’s most affecting songs.

There’s a weariness to John’s vocals that’s reflected in Taupin’s lyrics.  On “Tonight,” he sings to a lover of just wanting to have a night free of argument, and “Chameleon” finds him reunited with an old acquaintance with a mixture of excitement and resignation that it won’t last long.  On “Sorry…” John asks his lover straight out “what do I gotta do to make you love me?” with the exhaustion of someone who just wants to be told what to do so they can quit guessing.

Even on the more uptempo tracks like “One Horse Town,” John just sounds tired, like he’s struggling to summon the energy with which he used to deliver songs like this so easily.  In general, the more rocking tracks feel a bit perfunctory, as if John conceded that they were necessary to move units but would rather be bent over his piano singing heartsick songs.  He musters more enthusiasm for the swampy, horn-flecked Southern boogie of “Boogie Pilgrim,” with falsetto harmonies that sound like what Beck would use on his Midnite Vultures album 20-plus years later, and the campy female revenge romp “Shoulder Holster.”  Even these tracks aren’t in much of a hurry, moving with the laid-back tempo of a humid Alabama afternoon.

Though most of the album sticks close to his usual sonic template, Blue Moves also finds John with a willingness to experiment with sounds he’s never used before.  This is most evident on “The Wide-Eyed and Laughing,” built around a droning sitar line and John’s echoing recitation of Taupin’s inscrutable lyrics.  It has no percussion to speak of, and it’s unlike any other song in his canon thus far.

The final side of the album begins with “Where’s the Shoorah?” with John backed by a full-on Baptist choir as he sings some more obtuse Taupin lyrics, leading into “If There’s a God in Heaven (What’s He Waiting For?),” another gospel-leaning ballad with much more straightforward lyrics, railing against the injustices of poverty and war and a higher power that would willingly send his creations to their deaths.  He turns his gaze inward on “Idol,” where he looks through the lens of a star well out of his glory days.  Though John was still very much in his prime at this point, it’s not hard to see this song as a reference to his own sense of fatigue and slightly dwindled popularity.

After a largely downbeat string of songs, the album ends in slightly jarring fashion with “Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance!),” which feels a little like John trying to rally the troops and end the evening on a more upbeat note.  But despite his efforts, his command can’t help but feel a bit desperate after the largely downer album that precedes it.

John intended Blue Moves to be a transitional album, one that closed out his classic period and ushered in something new, and it does feel like a pretty apt capper to his whirlwind past six years.  It’s slow and long and largely darker-hued, but its length feels purposeful.  While it may have felt like a bit of a lefthand turn for the seemingly irrepressible talent seen on past albums, I can absolutely understand John wanting to try a slower pace for a while after his nonstop few years (just thinking about the relentless schedule of cranking out albums and world tours makes me want to take a nap).  If you’re willing to lose yourself in John’s contemplative mood, letting its songs unfurl at their own pace, you might find a lot to like about Blue Moves.  

Stevie Wonder #15: Talking Book (1972)

The second album of Wonder’s “Classic Period,” Talking Book was a major critical success as well as a major commercial hit, spawning two #1 singles.  Not bad for an album that’s considerably more bummed out than its predecessor.

The opening track, the sweetly romantic future-wedding-playlist staple (and one of those #1 hits) “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” is a bit of a trojan horse for the songs that follow, which seem to grapple with Wonder’s failed marriage to Syreeta Wright.  “Maybe Your Baby” is a deeply paranoid funk stomper with electric guitar squalls courtesy of Ray Parker Jr. (yes, he of the Ghostbusters theme).  Wonder’s anguished vocals detail a lover’s infidelity and the pain it’s caused him, with the backing vocals (also Wonder) implying “maybe your baby done made some other plans,” almost mocking the narrator’s torment.

As you might imagine, Talking Book is a much darker album than Music of My Mind, taking the complex relationship study of “Superwoman” to new heights.  But it also possesses an impressive maturity as a breakup album; not all doom and gloom, but offering some more measured perspective.  The third track, “You and I (We Can Conquer the World),” starts off as a romantic ballad, before turning to a more wistful kind of breakup song in its later verses.  Wonder acknowledges that, while their relationship didn’t work out, they can still wish each other well and remember the good times.  Too often when a partnership dissolves, we forget that there was happiness once, and it’s important to remember that sometimes.

Side 2 opens with the other #1 hit, “Superstition,” which is one of the tightest, most killer funk tracks ever made.  Finding Stevie in one-man-band mode with horn assists from Trevor Lawrence and Steve Madaio, it boasts possibly his most iconic use of the Hohner Clavinet in its infectious bass-like groove.  The lyrics find Stevie warning against turning to superstition and easy fixes as a solution to life’s problems, which end up doing more harm than good.  It’s both deeply funky and educational!

Side 2 also finds Wonder speaking truth to power on its second track, “Big Brother.”  A surprisingly critical and angry song, Wonder sings from the perspective of an anonymous, struggling marginalized individual, railing against the powers that be who ignore their needs–at least until election time rolls around.  Its lyrics aren’t subtle, but they’re all the more gutting for their directness.  At the end, Stevie’s double-tracked vocals barely contain his anger as he issues a dire warning: “You’ve killed all our leaders / I don’t even have to do nothin’ to you / You’ll cause your own country to fall.”  It’s a bleak track full of righteous fury, and one that’s sadly just as relevant today, where our government seems to represent its people less and less as the years go by, and minorities continue to be marginalized and silenced.

Things lighten up somewhat with the final three songs on the album, a trio of tracks looking at the dissolution of a relationship and the hope that true, enduring love is still out there.  The first of these, “Blame it on the Sun,” features lyrics by Wright, wherein the narrator looks back on a failed romance, trying to blame its failure on outside forces, while not being able to shake the feeling that the fault is his own.  It’s a powerful message, and one that anyone who’s gone through a breakup can relate to.  It’s all too easy to blame our failings on things we can’t control, things that really have nothing to do with us, but it’s a lot harder to acknowledge our own faults.  Even if the narrator isn’t quite ready to accept the blame, his conscience won’t let him off the hook.

The final two songs find Wonder worn out by the emotional toll of lost love, but still looking forward to the future.  “Looking For Another Pure Love” is a jazzy number with some kind of clunky lyrics, and it’s not as powerful as the closing song, “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever.”  Wonder admits he’s “encased inside a hollow shell,” but the beauty of the world quickly turns him around, giving him hope that true love is still out there.  He’s hoping the next love will stick for good, and sends us out with a rousing chorus of “let’s fall in love!”  For Stevie, love is a difficult, sometimes painful process, but one that’s well worth pursuing even through the pain.

Bob Dylan #36: Shadows in the Night (2015)

So Bob’s gone crooner on us.

Shadows in the Night marks the first of what has now grown to three (or maybe five, depending how you count them) albums of American standards, largely based on songs made popular by Frank Sinatra.  It seems like an odd pairing, especially since Dylan’s arrival marked a departure from the kind of velvety smooth singers of which Sinatra was king.  Dylan’s original brand of nervy, bluesy, confrontational folk-rock couldn’t be further from Frank’s style, and songwriters like Dylan and his ilk are often credited with bringing about a sea change in popular music that left crooners in the dust.  But Dylan has often professed an admiration for Sinatra, even going so far as to offer him some songs to record, so maybe this combination isn’t quite as unusual as it seems.

Standards albums are always a bit of a dicey gamble.  At best, you get something like Willie Nelson’s Stardust, a sparse, idiosyncratic collection that’s reverent but not overly slavish, with enough of the artist’s personality showing through to make it his own.  At worst, you get something like Rod Stewart’s lengthy Great American Songbook collection, a vapid retread that offers little in the way of an interesting take on the material.  They can often feel like empty attempts to cash in on the nostalgia of senior citizens with expendable income and a less-than-discerning ear.  Thankfully, Shadows is closer to Stardust than Songbook.

Part of what makes Shadows work as well as it does is that there actually is a bit of an overarching concept to the album.  Sinatra was one of the first artists to really capitalize on the album format, creating records that held together as a whole, with some kind of unifying theme, and he was hardly ever better than on his most bummed-out classics like In the Wee Small Hours or Where Are You? Dylan seeks to emulate those albums with Shadows, and as we already know, a bummed out Dylan is an engaging Dylan.  Shadows has a dusky, melancholy tone, with Dylan singing directly over sparse instrumentation including lightly brushed drums, skeletal guitars, and mournful pedal steel.  And I’ll be damned if Dylan doesn’t sound so much younger here.  While there’s still plenty of wear on his voice, at times he sounds clearer than he has in decades, as if the extra layers of grit have been washed off his vocal cords.

While it may seem odd that one of our greatest living songwriters would devote multiple albums to singing others’ work, Dylan’s always seemed as comfortable, if not more so, as an interpreter.  This album makes me think of Dylan’s last extended foray into interpretation, his 90s acoustic folk records.  Back when I listened to those, I felt like they were in many ways more revealing of Dylan’s inner self than his original work, and I think that’s the case here too.  We’ve got a guy singing songs that mean something to him, even if he didn’t write them, and there’s something oddly touching about it.  It definitely feels like a passion project as opposed to some cynical cash-in.  And while a younger Dylan might have added a layer of archness to these songs, there’s no irony to be found here.  It’s impossible to say whether the role of crooner is the final role Dylan will adopt in his long and varied career, but at this point, he’s got nothing to prove to anybody, and if he wants to sing standards for the rest of his career, he’s earned that right.