Rating: 4 out of 5.
The calm before the storm of success can be found on Friends, an ill-forgotten Elton John and Bernie Taupin collaboration. While it may be forgotten, it’s an album that felt like it did more for their working relationship than it did to put either man on the map. Madman Across the Water would do that, and a few lessons learned along the way with the movie soundtrack are crucial here. An iconic song starts the album off, the same route the self-titled album took. But Elton John had nothing beyond Your Song worth piping up about, nothing that’ll stick in the mind as well as the opening track for Madman Across the Water. The crucial difference, then, for at least a bit of this record, is hearing a little more in the way of quality. Tiny Dancer remains one of the great feats of John and Taupin’s collaborative efforts in piano rock, but there are some thrilling moments to come.
A gradual decline in quality across the album, but every song worth a spin. Tiny Dancer is an utterly stunning piece of work still, the softer touch on those instrumentals, layering them well, is a masterstroke matched only by Taupin’s writing. It’s the build, the sway, everything about the rise Tiny Dancer can create is what John would aim for with his sound on future releases. He would get to that same point again, conducting that rise and fall sincerely and brilliantly for years to come. But the rest of Madman Across the Water doesn’t quite have that perfection. Levon, the follow-up track, comes desperately close. A monumental song all the same, and isolated from Tiny Dancer, it does have a remarkable quality to it. The same, too, for Razor Face, though the lighter lyrical contexts and the ridiculously overwrought instrumental conclusion stop it from that perfect pattern John was starting to settle into at the start of Madman Across the Water.
Solid title track work and then the double bill of a B-side start, Indian Sunset and Holiday Inn, is where the album, gradually, loses its way. You can hear the decline, but it’s managed so well you’d think it was intentional. Holiday Inn begins to drift into a heightened orchestra display which just about pushes the limits of Taupin’s songwriting, and it all collapses from there. How apt it does so on Rotten Peaches. But it should be made clear, none of these songs are bad, just gradually less interesting, far too overworked, and a touch underwhelming. At least there’s a great story at play, though the sparse sound into a percussion-heavy boom, a piano rock inevitability, falls short. Still, it works well in the dying moments of the album, which were hardly going to compare to Tiny Dancer.
Even without that towering first track, the latter half of Madman Across the Water begins to get a little too comfortable. Those string sections and the blur with piano lead, the choir which comes through on All the Nasties is just a step too far. Enjoyable enough, but never on repeat. Trying to end on a haunting note with Goodbye doesn’t quite stick, either. That suddenness of wanting to provoke the audience into an emotional rut comes from a tender, consistent build, rather than the last track of the album. Madman Across the Water has some wonderful moments to it, but they’re mostly contained to the A-side and from there, it begins to dwindle. John had not quite brought on an overwhelming change to his sound, and he wouldn’t, either. He would fine-tune this further with some outstanding albums to follow. Madman Across the Water is where it started.
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