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Rating: "It's the most beautiful pop album I've ever heard in my life": that's roughly what I thought after listening to "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy," the ninth studio album by Elton John, dated 1975.
The way I discovered EJ's music was decidedly fortuitous and random, and my first impact with this artist, which happened with "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," was positive but not thrilling: although rich in amazing songs, the double LP from 1973 remains in my opinion a hodgepodge (in the good sense of the word) of diverse sounds weighed down by a significant amount of filler, in practice everything that "Captain Fantastic..." is not: the object of this review is a very refined album in its balance between pop and rock, substantially homogeneous in its sound despite its numerous nuances and enriched by autobiographical lyrics that are never banal and sometimes difficult to interpret.
The journey into the colorful world of Elton John begins with the title track, which immediately impresses with its wonderful acoustic arpeggio and its calm and relaxing atmosphere imbued with a touch of melancholy, and continues with the following nine songs in a triumph of class, style, and eclecticism: an organic and reasoned eclecticism that acts as a glue between the various moments of the album; among the best and unjustly little-known moments, there are certainly "Tower Of Babel", a very refined and magniloquent dreamlike pop enriched by the electric guitar harmonies of Davey Johnstone and the catchy and carefree "Bitter Fingers", characterized by a piano line that vaguely recalls that of "Seven Seas Of Rhye" by Queen and a decidedly brilliant and catchy chorus. Like every Uncle Elton's album, in "Captain Fantastic..." the piano ballads that made him famous are not missing, among which obviously stands out what is somewhat the manifesto song of the album, "Someone Saved My Life Tonight", a masterful melodic crescendo in which Elton's warm and expressive voice, supported by the band's choirs, gives birth to a goosebump-inducing vocal performance, without forgetting the sadder and "melodramatic," yet equally moving, "We All Fall In Love Sometimes", which leads into the album's closing, "Curtain", a slow and dreamy song, almost psychedelic in its progression and reverberated ending.
Completing the picture by adding further touches of color are the biting rock of "Gotta Get A Meal Ticket", the unsettling blues of "Tell Me When The Whistle Blows" and especially my favorite song on this album, a gem of irresistible and charming baroque glam-pop called "Better Off Dead", the true cherry on top of this wonderful album.
Remarkable is the inclusion among the bonus tracks, in addition to the good but overrated "Philadelphia Freedom", of a sumptuous and very refined cover of the Beatles classic "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds", a song that seems written expressly for EJ so well does his voice fit its softly lysergic atmosphere and its B-side, "One Day At A Time", an exquisite gem of elegant and melancholic pop written by John Lennon, which complete (and if possible further enrich) this stunning and unrepeatable album, the product of an artist at the height of his creative splendor: if you are looking for a masterpiece of pop music with a capital P, then "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy" is what you need.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (05:46)
Captain fantastic raised and regimented, hardly a hero
Just someone his mother might know
Very clearly a case for corn flakes and classics
"two teas both with sugar please"
In the back of an alley
While little dirt cowboys turned brown in their saddles
Sweet chocolate biscuits and red rosy apples in summer
For it’s hay make and "hey mom, do the papers say anything good.
Are there chances in life for little dirt cowboys
Should I make my way out of my home in the woods"
Brown dirt cowboy, still green and growing
City slick captain
Fantastic the feedback
The honey the hive could be holding
For there’s weak winged young sparrows that starve in the winter
Broken young children on the wheels of the winners
And the sixty-eight summer festival wallflowers are thinning
For cheap easy meals and hardly a home on the range
Too hot for the band with a desperate desire for change
We’ve thrown in the towel too many times
Out for the count and when we’re down
Captain fantastic and the brown dirt cowboy
From the end of the world to your town
And all this talk of jesus coming back to see us
Couldn’t fool us
For we were spinning out our lines walking on the wire
Hand in hand went music and the rhyme
The captain and the kid stepping in the ring
From here on sonny sonny sonny, it’s a long and lonely climb
Captain Fantastic
02 Tower of Babel (04:29)
Snow.
Cement,
And ivory young towers,
Someone called us Babylon
Those hungry hunters
Tracking down the hours.
But where all your shoulders when cried,
Were the darlings on the sideline
Dreaming up such cherished lies,
To whisper in your ear before you die.
It's party time for the guys in the tower of Babel.
Sodom meet Gomorrah,
Cain meet Abel.
Have a ball ya�ll
See the letches crawl
With the call girls under the table.
Watch 'em dig their graves,
'cause Jesus don't save the guys
in the tower of Babel
Junk.
Angel,
This closet�s always stacked.
The dealers in the basement
Filling you prescription,
For a brand new heart attack.
But where all your shoulders when we cried,
Were the doctors in attendance
Saying how they felt so sick inside.
Or was it just the scalpel blade that lied.
03 Bitter Fingers (04:34)
I'm going on the circuit, I'm doing all the clubs
And I really need a song boys to stir those workers up
And get their wives to sing it with me just like in the pubs
When I worked the good old pubs in Stepney
Oh could you knock a line or two together for a friend
Sentimental tear inducing with a happy end
And we need a tune to open our season at Southend
Can you help us
It's hard to write a song with bitter fingers
So much to prove, so few to tell you why
Those old die-hards in Denmark Street start laughing
At the keyboard player's hollow haunted eyes
It seems to me a change is really needed
I'm sick of tra-la-las and la-de-das
No more long days hacking hunks of garbage
Bitter fingers never swung on swinging stars, swinging stars
I like the warm blue flame, the hazy heat it brings
It loosens up the muscles and forces you to sing
You know it's just another hit and run from the tin pan alley twins
And there's a chance that one day you might write a standard lads
So churn them out quick and fast and we'll still pat your backs
'Cause we need what we can get to launch another dozen acts
Are you working
07 Better Off Dead (02:38)
There was a face on a hoarding that someone had drawn on
And just enough time for the night to pass by without warning
Away in the distance there's a blue flashing light
Someone's in trouble somewhere tonight
As the flickering neon stands ready to fuse
The wind blows away all of yesterday's news
Well they've locked up their daughters and they battened the hatches
They always could find us but they never could catch us
Through the grease streaked windows of an all night cafe
We watched the arrested get taken away
And that cigarette haze has ecology beat
As the whores and the drunks filed in from the street
`Cause the steams in the boiler the coals in the fire
If you ask how I am then I'll just say inspired
If the thorn of a rose is the thorn in your side
Then you're better off dead if you haven't yet died
10 Curtains (06:16)
I used to know this old scarecrow
He was my song
My joy and sorrow
Cast alone between the furrows
Of a field no longer sown by anyone
I held a dandelion
That said the time had come
To leave upon the wind
Not to return
When summer burned the earth again
Oh oh oh, oh oh oh....
Cultivate the freshest flower
This garden ever grew
Beneath these branches
I once wrote such childish words for you
But that's okay
There's treasure children always seek to find
And just like us
You must have had
A once upon a time
Oh oh oh, oh oh oh..
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