Elton John - Tumbleweed Connection

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Free Music Notes for Tumbleweed Connection

Free Music Review: Expressive, Artistic, Country-Flavored
Hit: 5 Stars

I have so many favorite songs on this CD, that there isn't sufficient space to discuss all the songs properly in a single review. Most of my favorites are the ballads. Slow, smooth, mellow, beautifully and artistically performed. "Come Down in Time," "My Father's Gun," "Love Song," and "Talking Old Soldiers" all fall into this category. The topics are serious. The lyrics broach incredibly mature subjects for the young songwriting duo and Lesley Duncan. The arrangements, instrumentation and backing vocals are well done.

Several of the faster songs are also excellent. "Ballad of a Well-Known Gun" starts off sounding a bit like the early 70s music it is, but then the beat and lyrics have a country flavor that could have placed Elton into country rock had he continued on this path. There seems something a bit bizarre about an English singer singing about a gunfighter in the American west, but this first song on the album is performed so naturally that I immediately fell into the pace and styling of the album.

"Country Comfort" may make some think of the beverage by the same name, because the tone of the song feels mellow and smooth. The harmony on this song, with the steel guitar and violin, position this song squarely as a country song. There isn't enough rock in this song to call the song country-rock. The next song, "Son of Your Father," has a boogie woogie piano starting the song, with segue into a fast rock beat. This song is rock with country underpinnings.

I've always enjoyed "Where to Now St. Peter?" The airy instrumentation and vocals, coupled with the surrealistic, dreamy lyrics, with a transition into a rock beat, create an interesting and unusual song about death. A song more easily experienced than described.

"Amoreena" is a love song, but much too fast-paced to be a ballad. The lyrics try a bit too hard to be poetically evocative rather than descriptive, but fall just a bit short. The music is pure pop as played by the instruments. The lyrics try to keep the song tied to the country flavor of the rest of the album, and succeed more by positioning of the song than any styling of the music or vocals.

"Into the Old Man's Shoes" is well-done song about the transition from one generation to the next. The instrumentation foreshadows "Madman Across the Water," and would have fit well in that album. The subject, as in many of the other albums, is very serious and mature, and even the support of the instruments creates one of Elton's best, and highly underappreciated, songs.

I absolutely love "Burn Down the Mission". "Burn Down the Mission", at more than six and a half minutes, is one of the longest of Elton's early songs. The lyrics are virtually incomprehensible. While portions of the lyrics make sense, they conjoin pieces of Americana that did not coexist. Some portions of the lyrics make no sense within a stanza, for example burning down the mission while trying to take everything you need to live inside. In spite of the bizarre lyrical combinations, Elton's music and beat convey the sense of despair and urgency of people escaping attack by Mexican soldiers or perhaps Native Americans. I'm unsure because missions were typically an artifact of the southwest, while at least one reference is to a parish, which are only found in Louisiana. I've come to the conclusion that this song at the time perhaps bordered on being progressive.

The last song on this CD is a nearly nine minute version of "Madman Across the Water." If you listen to this song and compare it to the style of the music on the CD "Madman Across the Water," I think you can see why this version was not used. The style is too heavy and different from the mellower, heavily orchestrated music of that CD. With the variety of musical pace and style on this album, this more bombastic version of "Madman Across the Water" is a somewhat better fit. It creates an interesting ending to this unique album.

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