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Title: Elton John – Tumbleweed Connection (1970) [Reissue 2004]
Genre: Rock
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Tumbleweed Connection is the third album by English singer/songwriter Elton John. It is a concept album based on the country and western/Americana themes. All songs are written by John and Bernie Taupin, with the exception of “Love Song” by Lesley Duncan. The album was recorded at Trident Studios, London, England in March 1970 and released in October of the same year. It peaked at #2 on the UK Albums Chart and #5 on the US Billboard 200 chart. In the US, it was certified gold in March 1971 and platinum in August 1998 by the RIAA. In 2003, Tumbleweed Connection was ranked #463 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Instead of repeating the formula that made Elton John a success, John and Bernie Taupin attempted their most ambitious record to date for the follow-up to their breakthrough. A loose concept album about the American West, Tumbleweed Connection emphasized the pretensions that always lay beneath their songcraft. Half of the songs don’t follow conventional pop song structures; instead, they flow between verses and vague choruses. These experiments are remarkably successful, primarily because Taupin’s lyrics are evocative and John’s melodic sense is at its best. As should be expected for a concept album about the Wild West, the music draws from country and blues in equal measures, ranging from the bluesy choruses of “Ballad of a Well-Known Gun” and the modified country of “Country Comfort” to the gospel-inflected “Burn Down the Mission” and the rolling, soulful “Amoreena.” Paul Buckmaster manages to write dramatic but appropriate string arrangements that accentuate the cinematic feel of the album.

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Title: Elton John – Super Audio CD Sampler (2004)
Genre: Rock
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

The title says all. Here is just a promotional collection of Elton John’s best sounding songs released in SACD format.

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Title: Elton John – Peachtree Road (2004)
Genre: Rock
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Peachtree Road is the 28th studio album by British singer/songwriter Elton John, released in 2004. It was named after Peachtree Road, the northern part of Peachtree Street in Atlanta, where one of John’s four homes is located. This is the only album during his long career on which John alone has sole credit as producer.

Elton John returned to the sound and aesthetic of his classic early-’70s work with 2001’s Songs From the West Coast, finding critical acclaim, if not much commercial success. Not that the lack of sales greatly bothered Elton — in many interviews, including one with Entertainment Weekly the week before Peachtree Road was released in November 2004, he claimed he was “disappointed” that it just barely went gold, but he was tired of making “uneven” records. John wasn’t merely doing publicity: Peachtree Road proves that he’s back to making good, solid records focused on songs, not hits, the way he did at the outset of his career. Since this is an album by a veteran, not an artist on the rise, it doesn’t have the sense of discovery, or the hunger, that the early records still retain, and the production — the first self-production by John with no collaborators — is a little cleaner and crisper than the rich, warm sound of the late Gus Dudgeon (to whom this record is dedicated), who helmed such masterworks as Tumbleweed Connection. This means Peachtree Road is about craft, both in the writing and recording, which also means that it’s a grower, with each song sounding stronger, better with each spin. While the sound of the record is bright and polished, this album makes few concessions to radio: this is certainly adult pop, but it never panders to adult contemporary radio, and the music is a little too rugged and sturdy to fit alongside the stubbornly sweet sounds of 21st century MOR. Which is precisely the point, of course: Elton has consciously returned to the reflective singer/songwriter template of the early ’70s, both in his writing and production. Not that this is as lush as Elton John or country-tinged as Tumbleweed Connection — “Answer in the Sky” recalls the high-flying disco of “Philadelphia Freedom” quite deliberately, and “They Call Her the Cat” finds a halfway point between “Honkey Cat” and “The Bitch Is Back” — but it fits alongside those albums quite nicely because the focus is on songs, not trying to have hits. These songs may not rival his standards, but they’re in the same tradition, and there’s not a bad song in the bunch, resulting in a sturdy, satisfying record that proves that the comeback on Songs From the West Coast was no fluke and, hopefully, this latter-day renaissance for Elton will not be short-lived either.

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Title: Elton John – Madman Across The Water (1971) [Reissue 2004]
Genre: Rock
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Madman Across the Water is the fourth studio album by British singer/songwriter Elton John. The title song was set to be released on John’s previous album Tumbleweed Connection. However, it was set aside and would eventually be re-recorded and serve as the title track of this album. The SACD version of the album contained a longer version of “Razor Face” which extended the song-ending jam to 6:42 instead of the early fade on the original album.

Trading the cinematic aspirations of Tumbleweed Connection for a tentative stab at prog rock, Elton John and Bernie Taupin delivered another excellent collection of songs with Madman Across the Water. Like its two predecessors, Madman Across the Water is driven by the sweeping string arrangements of Paul Buckmaster, who gives the songs here a richly dark and haunting edge. And these are songs that benefit from grandiose treatments. With most songs clocking in around five minutes, the record feels like a major work, and in many ways it is. While it’s not as adventurous as Tumbleweed Connection, the overall quality of the record is very high, particularly on character sketches “Levon” and “Razor Face,” as well as the melodramatic “Tiny Dancer” and the paranoid title track. Madman Across the Water begins to fall apart toward the end, but the record remains an ambitious and rewarding work, and John never attained its darkly introspective atmosphere again.

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Title: Elton John – Honky Château (1972) [Reissue 2004]
Genre: Rock
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Honky Chateau is the fifth studio album by British singer/songwriter Elton John, released in 1972. In 2003, the album was ranked number 357 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. It was certified gold in July 1972 and platinum in October 1995 by the RIAA. Honky Chateau became the first of a string of albums by Elton John to hit #1 in the Billboard Charts in the US. In Canada, the album peaked at #3 on the RPM 100 Top Albums Chart, reaching this position on 29 July 1972, dropping two places to #5, then returning to #3 for a further twelve consecutive weeks before falling to #9 on 4 November of the same year.

Considerably lighter than Madman Across the Water, Honky Chateau is a rollicking collection of ballads, rockers, blues, country-rock, and soul songs. On paper, it reads like an eclectic mess, but it plays as the most focused and accomplished set of songs Elton John and Bernie Taupin ever wrote. The skittering boogie of “Honky Cat” and the light psychedelic pop of “Rocket Man” helped send Honky Chateau to the top of the charts, but what is truly impressive about the album is the depth of its material. From the surprisingly cynical and nasty “I Think I’m Gonna Kill Myself” to the moving ballad “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters,” John is at the top of his form, crafting immaculate pop songs with memorable melodies and powerful hooks. While Taupin’s lyrics aren’t much more comprehensible than before, John delivers them with skill and passion, making them feel more substantial than they are. But what makes Honky Chateau a classic is the songcraft, and the way John ties disparate strands of roots music into distinctive and idiosyncratic pop — it’s one of the finest collections of mainstream singer/songwriter pop of the early ’70s.

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Title: Elton John – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973) [30th Anniversary Edition 2003] (2xSACD)
Genre: Rock
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is the seventh studio album by the British singer-songwriter Elton John. Released in 1973, it has come to be regarded as one of his best and most popular albums. In 2003, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The album was ranked No. 91 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and No. 59 in Channel 4’s 2009 list of 100 Greatest Albums. The album has sold 31 million copies.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was where Elton John’s personality began to gather more attention than his music, as it topped the American charts for eight straight weeks. In many ways, the double album was a recap of all the styles and sounds that made John a star. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is all over the map, beginning with the prog rock epic “Funeral for a Friend (Love Lies Bleeding)” and immediately careening into the balladry of “Candle in the Wind.” For the rest of the album, John leaps between popcraft (“Bennie and the Jets”), ballads (“Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”), hard rock (“Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”), novelties (“Jamaica Jerk-Off”), Bernie Taupin’s literary pretensions (“The Ballad of Danny Bailey”), and everything in between. Though its diversity is impressive, the album doesn’t hold together very well. Even so, its individual moments are spectacular and the glitzy, crowd-pleasing showmanship that fuels the album pretty much defines what made Elton John a superstar in the early ’70s.

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Title: Elton John – Elton John (1970) [Reissue 2004]
Genre: Rock
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Elton John is the second album by English singer/songwriter Elton John. However, because it was his first album released in America, many people there assumed it was his first album, as Empty Sky was not released in the US until 1975. Elton John includes his breakthrough hit, “Your Song”, and helped to establish his career during what was considered the “singer-songwriter” era of popular music. In the US, it was certified gold in February 1971 by the RIAA. In the same year, it was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. In 2003, the album was ranked #468 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. On 27 November 2012, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame as an album cited as exhibiting “qualitative or historical significance”.

Empty Sky was followed by Elton John, a more focused and realized record that deservedly became his first hit. John and Bernie Taupin’s songwriting had become more immediate and successful; in particular, John’s music had become sharper and more diverse, rescuing Taupin’s frequently nebulous lyrics. “Take Me to the Pilot” might not make much sense lyrically, but John had the good sense to ground its willfully cryptic words with a catchy blues-based melody. Next to the increased sense of songcraft, the most noticeable change on Elton John is the addition of Paul Buckmaster’s grandiose string arrangements. Buckmaster’s orchestrations are never subtle, but they never overwhelm the vocalist, nor do they make the songs schmaltzy. Instead, they fit the ambitions of John and Taupin, as the instant standard “Your Song” illustrates. Even with the strings and choirs that dominate the sound of the album, John manages to rock out on a fair share of the record. Though there are a couple of underdeveloped songs, Elton John remains one of his best records.

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Title: Elton John – Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy (1975) [Reissue 2004]
Genre: Rock
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy is the ninth studio album by British singer/musician Elton John. It debuted at number 1 on the U.S. Pop Albums chart, the first album ever to do so, and stayed there for seven weeks. It was certified gold in May 1975 and was certified platinum and 3x platinum in March 1993 by the RIAA. In Canada, it also debuted at number 1 on the RPM national Top Albums chart and only broke a run of what would have been fifteen consecutive weeks at the top by falling one position to number 2 in the ninth week. On the UK Albums Chart, it peaked at # 2. In 2003, the album was ranked number 158 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. This was the last album until Too Low For Zero that Elton John and his classic band would play together.

Sitting atop the charts in 1975, Elton John and Bernie Taupin recalled their rise to power in Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, their first explicitly conceptual effort since Tumbleweed Connection. It’s no coincidence that it’s their best album since then, showcasing each at the peak of his power, as John crafts supple, elastic, versatile pop and Taupin’s inscrutable wordplay is evocative, even moving. What’s best about the record is that it works best of a piece — although it entered the charts at number one, this only had one huge hit in “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” which sounds even better here, since it tidily fits into the musical and lyrical themes. And although the musical skill on display here is dazzling, as it bounces between country and hard rock within the same song, this is certainly a grower. The album needs time to reveal its treasures, but once it does, it rivals Tumbleweed in terms of sheer consistency and eclipses it in scope, capturing John and Taupin at a pinnacle. They collapsed in hubris and excess not long afterward — Rock of the Westies, which followed just months later is as scattered as this is focused — but this remains a testament to the strengths of their creative partnership.

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