02 Dublin
If there is a piano-playing version of prog rock, then Elton John visited that place a good few times during his show. Some of the instrumental songs lasted a fair old duration as he threw in all manner of quirky chords and embellishments.
Introductions would get teased out and musical culs-de-sac would be ignored as he seemed intent on creating these mini-symphonies.
But for every longueuron the night there were also some enlightening versions of some of his greatest work: Daniel, Your Song, Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Wordand the much-underrated Tiny Dancer. With no backing band and just his piano, this stripped down approach allowed him to really get to the core of these songs and his voice was generally superb. He may not be able to scale the high notes like he used to, but there's a richer timbre there now which only adds to the vintage appeal of his earlier work.
For almost the first hour and a half, it was just him at the piano with a minimal back-drop and the audience played along with the generally hushed atmosphere by remaining quietly rapt. What didn’t help though was the frequent appearance (on digital audio tape presumably) of swishy strings in the background – the kind of string sound that makes you think the “atmospheric” dry ice can’t be far behind.
But the show went into another gear when the virtuoso percussionist Ray Cooper (who’s been playing with Elton – on and off – for decades now) appeared. With a huge array of instruments at his disposal, Cooper gave the hitherto sparse show an almost fringe-theatre-like look and sound. There is a delight to be had in just how well the two of them mesh their sounds – and how different an impulse Cooper gives to the music.
Not the most talkative of performers, John trawled through his many musical "eras" and with the new material there is a sense that he is intent on rescaling the heights he previously reached with work such as Tumbleweed Connection. And for every meandering and nonsensical boogie-woogie piano run there was something like a belting version of Philadelphia Freedomto more than even out the score.
