The album title refers to the Victorian house where four Scots took refuge during his exile in London becoming the mansion into a genuine commune dedicated to music, art and God knows what else in the early 70s. A pleasant surprise, it is true that there were thousands of bands like this at the time but Writing on the Wall is at hand now…
This clamshell box contains five CDs which present stereo and mono versions of the first two albums (Shades Of Deep Purple and Book Of Taliesyn) along with third album Deep Purple and a selection of bonus tracks. Although the extra material was largely issued as part of the EMI reissues in 2000, this will be the CD debut of Book Of Taliesyn in mono and everything is remastered for 2014…
…Stockfish continues to shine with its groundbreaking SACD technology. The precision and clarity of the stringed instrumentation is flawless, augmenting the acoustics without compromising the intended starkness. (…) Songs For The Road is an engaging album.
…Stockfish continues to shine with its groundbreaking SACD technology. The precision and clarity of the stringed instrumentation is flawless, augmenting the acoustics without compromising the intended starkness. (…) Songs For The Road is an engaging album.
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.
Road Songs for Lovers is the twenty-fourth studio album by British singer-songwriter Chris Rea, released on 29 September 2017. Rea stated there was no initial intention to make a new album, but after a bad medical condition in 2016 he started to write new songs which eventually led to a band regroup, and first album release in six years. The songs were inspired by traveling on the road to London, seeing couples in cars and questioning the "people's love stories inside cars". According to Rea, most of the songs are about a boy-girl relationship in the car. He has stated that his favorite song is "Last Train", the lyrics of which are not about the typical meaning of the last train which goes home, but taking the last train in a desperate situation without knowing anything about its direction. Deluxe 2-Disc Set includes Bonus CD Live At The Montreux Jazz Festival, Saturday, July 5, 2014.