The Kaptain and the Great Embarrassment

Oh the pleasure of cracking open a new CD. there literally is a new CD smell: all warm and plasticky. i get the bulk of my music online from eMusic, so its a special treat to unwrap the packaging, struggle to get the sticker residue off and finally pull out the disc, refracting an RGB stream of light into your eyes.

with that being said, today was new release tuesday and with it came Elton John's The Captain & The Kid as well as the Scissor Sisters' Ta-Dah, both of which i picked up along with the new TV on the Radio and Justin Timberlake (if you claim you don't like him, you're lying to yourself.) i will say that while i had little intention of buying it, i buckled under the pressure and snatched up Elton's latest. what intrigued me about the record was that it was/ is supposed to be a demi-sequel to 1975's Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. How wrong I was.

Elton John has always been a musical guilty pleasure. much like early Rod Stewart, who wrote and recorded great roots rock before it was tainted in the late seventies obsession with super-stardom and slick record production (Rod, I'm talking about anything pre-Atlantic Crossing)

so i was practically raised on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973). and i'll assert that Tumbleweed Connection (1971) might be in my top 20 of all time albums. I mean he released such an amazing string of records (all lyrically dominated if not written entirely by Bernie Taupin) thru Captain Fantastic that i feel he rivals any of the great 70s songwriters. James Taylor and Paul Simon sound like a whinny, over-privileged respectables next to the blue collar kiss-offs like "My Father's Gun" and "I've Seen That Movie Too."

so the last three records Elton has put out have received critical acclaim, mostly heralded as a return to form, and the tracks are once again penned by Taupin. (RS gave them all **** 1,2,3) i've largely ignored them as most great rock stars (and elton was most certainly that) have [musically] aged poorly (U2 i'm looking in your direction).

gone are Elton's "Bitter Fingers" and his search for a "Meal Ticket" and in it's place are ten glossy, over produced songs that suspiciously reek of broadway musical in the making. hell, even dylan has a broadway show on the horizon (cringe!), and this is an obvious effort by Elton and Taupin to assert their [second] entry to the stage (after the failure that was Lestat.) they've created enough characters over the years (they even reference rocket men. double cringe) that if you spit-shine those old tunes, i'm sure some underwhelming playwright could string the songs into a narrative. even the title track of the new album is a reprise of the last 30 years and concludes with an updated "Capt. Fantastic" riff.

the results: far from fantastic.

it was the dust that made the earlier record great. but it's not even the polish that is throwing me. it's the lyrics and melody which actually sound like a joke david brent (ricky gervais) on The Office would sing:

Nostradamus said, "I predict
The world will end at half past six"
But he didn't say exactly when.

it could almost be a verse out of "True Love on the True Love Highway."

so who holds the embarrassment card. he for releasing this, or i for laying down $9.99? be careful what you wish for. i guess i should have foregone that new CD smell. i want the dust back.