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Music reviews: Bernie Taupin, Fontaines D.C., Michael Kiwanuka
A personal collection of songs from a longtime Elton John lyricist, a rock album from Dublin, and new work from a singer-songwriter who recently suffered a stroke
Growing up in England, Bernie Taupin was obsessed with American “cowboy lore and stories, and with country ballads,” said Barry Mazor in The Wall Street Journal. Now 76, the longtime Elton John lyricist has refined that love of Americana into a “quite personal collection of songs.” The Sea Has No Mercy is his first solo album in 40 years, with all the songs written by him alone. The title track has a “deceptively sweet melody” tempered by his “voicecracking rasp.” Billy the Kid, Neil Armstrong, and George Jones haunt the “dirge-like” standout “Ghosts of Greater Men,” as Taupin ponders the prospect of meeting these legends in the afterlife.
Ever since he anointed himself the Brown Dirt Cowboy to John’s Captain Fantastic back in 1975, Taupin has often allowed himself to be distracted by “Western shtick,” said John Aizlewood in Mojo. These songs are more distinctive. They transcend genre, even if they’re steeped in American roots music. “Come on California” is a “rueful” waltz featuring Brandi Carlile on backing vocals, while Taupin’s “grizzled, Tom Waitsian” growl on “Joker” suggests “the old dog is up for new tricks.”
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This is “a rock album with the heart of a dystopian sci-fi epic,” said Jon Dolan in Rolling Stone. The fifth album from Dublin-based rockers Fontaines D.C. “has a similar world-building spirit” to its Grammy-nominated 2024 predecessor, Romance, but pushes “deeper into electronic moodiness and orchestral sweep.” The band’s sonic palette and songwriting show impressive growth here, but their lyrics have grown much darker. They imagine “doom on all sides” from impending AI extermination and transhumanist tech oligarchs bent on living forever. Yet there is hope in songs like “One Man,” which constructs “a dream-pop cathedral,” and “Where Is Gone?,” a duet featuring Rosalía that goes down like a smooth 1960s mood piece from Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood.
“Sometimes great, sometimes scattershot,” Dopamine Chamber “isn’t nearly as revolutionary as Romance,” said Grant Sharples in Paste. Yet Fontaines D.C. retains its “knack for searing anthems.” The album lives up to its title with “outsize, immediate rock songs” like “Happy for You” and “Demolition,” refreshing jolts to pierce the pervading gloom.
‘Fudge’ by Michael Kiwanuka
★★★
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Michael Kiwanuka’s “beautiful but willfully understated” fourth album, 2024’s Small Changes, turns out to have a sister album, said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. Fudge was recorded at the same time, its songs not exactly written but “jammed into existence” by Kiwanuka and his live band. It wasn’t released until now because the singer-songwriter, 39, suffered a stroke that limited his ability to speak, let alone sing; he’s still recovering in a residential facility. That lack of extra polishing time leaves Fudge rough around the edges—“Across the Sky,” an acoustic number, “starts abruptly in the middle of a chord, as if someone frantically hit the record button after Kiwanuka started playing”—but it feels “vivid and alive,” with the vibrancy of “warm and unforced” performances.
This is “a sun-soaked daydream of an album, awash in afternoon light,” said Melanie McFarland in Salon. It’s easy “to get lost in its layers of strings, to chase a cello’s lusty glide past innocent piano notes.” Kiwanuka is always at his best live. But as we wait to hear how he recovers, and if he will ever tour again, Fudge lends itself to many repeat listens.
