Dig These Discs :: Elton John, Yoko Ono, Lucinda Williams, Lissie, The London Suede

Elton John releases his 33rd studio album, "Wonderful Crazy Night," a collection of 10 new songs produced by John and T-Bone Burnett. Lucinda Williams releases her 12th studio album -- actually a two-album collection of 14 songs dealing with death and loss. Yoko Ono bequeaths a free sequel to her 2007 album, "Yes, I'm a Witch." Suede, known as The London Suede in the U.S., bring their English indie/pop/rock music back back with their seventh studio album. And singer/songwriter Lissie channels her Midwestern roots in her new release, "My Wild West," her third studio album.

"Wonderful Crazy Night" (Elton John)

Elton John releases his 33rd studio album, "Wonderful Crazy Night," a collection of 10 new songs produced by John and T-Bone Burnett. All songs were written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, and recorded one per day. The album starts out with the jaunty title track, featuring funky piano over lyrics like, "Someday if you ask me all about the key to love, I'll say that wonderful night, what a wonderful crazy night it was." It's a sound right off "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." John would drop a coin in your can, if you were a one-man band in the saucy track, "In the Name of You." You'll need a "Claw Hammer" to pull down your walls, sings John in a jazzy number with cascading keyboards. He loses himself in you in the upbeat track "Blue Wonderful." Elton John has always been a folksy pop singer, and this vibe comes to the surface in tracks like the country tune, "I've Got Two Wings." In "A Good Heart," the drama-tinged piano chords are reminiscent of Liberace, but the patter of the song is all the grist of a basic blue-collar love song. The first single, "Looking Up," is honky-tonk and brio, the stuff that John made his reputation on in early cuts like "Crocodile Rock." Is he the love of your life, or just a "Guilty Pleasure," wonders John in one track. In the next, his acoustic guitar muses as he bangs on his "Tambourine." He finishes very strong with "The Open Chord," an upbeat tune that sounds like it could have come out of one of his Broadway scores. The deluxe edition has two additional songs, "Free and Easy" and "England and America," and the super deluxe edition adds four bonus tracks and a 20-page book with photos and lyrics. John is currently helping Lady Gaga out on her next project.
(Mercury Records)

"The Ghosts of Highway 20" (Lucinda Williams)

Lucinda Williams releases her 12th studio album, actually a two-album collection of 14 songs dealing with death and loss. The alt-country artist teams up again with Bill Frisell on guitar as she mines her memories of driving up and down Highway 20 in the South. It's a more intense album than her last cut, "Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone," as she said, "The older you get, the more loss you experience. The more loss and pain you experience, the more you need your art." She kicks things off with "Dust," singing, "I stare at the ceiling and wish the world would mend," singing of "a sadness so deep the sun seems black." She plays the prostitute in "House of Earth," singing, "I kiss you in such odd and natural ways, your wife will then find out that kissing pays," her voice heavy and soporific. She sings to a friend who's with a man who beats her in "I Know All About It," and has forgiveness for a friend for whom she keeps a "Place in My Heart." In "Death Came," she wonders why "death gave you his kiss," and gets sassy asking them to open up the "Doors of Heaven" and let her in. She's finally tired of living! She finishes the first disc with the slow and sultry "Louisiana." Disc 2 is more of the same fine stuff. The title song is all soft edges, making it all the more welcome when her rollicking "Bitter Memory" singing, "you're a thorn in my side, bitter memory, you're the trouble on my mind." It's one of the best tracks on the album. She sings of the working man in "Factory," with the slightest rattle of tambourine keeping time. She bemoans a difficult lover but "Can't Close the Door On Love." The instrumentation is excellent in "If My Love Could Kill," the song in which Williams addresses the loss of her father to Alzheimer's disease. She gets a real cowboy feel in "If There's a Heaven," and finishes the album with "Faith and Grace." Pretty much how she operates in real life.
(Highway 20 Records)

"Yes, I'm a Witch Too" (Yoko Ono)

Beatles-buster Yoko Ono releases a free sequel to her 2007 album, "Yes, I'm a Witch," a revisiting of Ono's 1977 LP, "A Story." Each artist received a master recording from the album to work with, and given free reign to re-record and interpret the songs. In "Yes, I'm a Witch Too," Ono takes these compositions and remixes them. Danny Tenaglia brings a dark synthpop feel to "Walking on Thin Ice," and Death Cab for Cutie synths up "Forgive Me" for a dance floor crowd, like Moby does in his cover of "Hell in Paradise." She sings about sending her children to war in "Mrs. Lennon," and Sparks adds a singsong piano beat to "Give Me Something," as Ono croons, "Give me something that's not cold." "Move on Fast" turns into a rock fantasy in Jack Douglas' hands, and Dave Aude is no-holds-barred with the electro-club take on "Wouldnit." Penguin Prison brings their electro style to "She Gets Down on Her Knees," making it one of the best cuts on the 17-song album. She lights her fourth cigarette and thinks of her friends, bemoaning the forgotten phone calls, letters and stories in "Dogtown" with son Sean Ono Lennon. "The Soul Got Out of the Box" will creep your shit out as Ono sings of Doomsday. Portugal puts the '90s pop sound in "Approximately Infinite Universe," as she sings of the town of Sapporo. She teams up with female artists tUnE-yArDs, Ebony Bones! and Cibo Matto in this recreation, which results in some of the albums best tracks. Cibo Matto lends their high, wavering feminine vocals to "Yes, I'm Your Angel," making it something truly special. The tUnE-yArDs do a spoken word cover of "Warrior Woman" that is as weird as Ono would like, and Automatique add oddness to the already strange track, "Coffin Car." John Palumbo forwards a very organic version of "I Have A Woman Inside My Soul," and Miike Snow goes into outer space in "Catman." The album wraps up with Ebony Bones! trance version of "No Bed for Beatle John." Although Yoko Ono's caterwauling can often sound like Diamanda Galas thrown into a blender, this clever album showcases some of her most interesting work. And making it available for free on Soundcloud just shows that Ono is still able to gauge the cultural zeitgeist of the time.
(Astralwerks)

"Night Thoughts" (The London Suede)

Suede, known as The London Suede in the U.S., bring their English indie/pop/rock music back back with their seventh studio album. In a dozen cuts, the band furthers their alternative rock. The band was created in London in 1989, split up in 2003, and reformed in 2010. It now consists of singer Brett Anderson, guitarist Richard Oakes, bass player Mat Osman, drummer Simon Gilbert and Neil Coding on keyboards and rhythm guitar. The band start the Brit-pop revolution of the '90s. They kick things off with "When You Were Young," creating a musical soundscape and painting an image of a young child, scared, hiding himself under the sheets. The intense indie sound they are known for comes out in "Outsiders," about a pair of lovers "caught in the game they made." With a rip of electric guitar, they're out the gate in "No Tomorrow," and slow things down in the eerie, spare "Pale Snow," with lyrics like, "When the wolf is at your door, your child is at your breast, don't tell me that you'll change." Anderson wants you to tell him the things that scare you, because "I Don't Know How To Reach You," he sings. He doesn't know the right expressions, doesn't have too many credentials, but "What I'm Trying to Tell You" is this is enough, sings Anderson. The tension is kept taut in "Tightrope," and the keyboards get a working over in "Learning to Be." They rock out like a slightly less melancholy Morrissey in "Like Kids," one of the catchiest of the bunch, and bemoan the fact that "I Can't Give Her What She Wants." You'll love the moody guitar licks and sweet cello in "When You Were Young." He finishes with "The Fur and the Feathers," painting a scene of her, waiting on the platform in the rain, a look of hungriness in her eyes. Oh, the thrill of the chase! The new album comes with a movie, a DVD of which will be included in a special edition of the LP.
(Rhino)

"My Wild West" (Lissie)

Singer/songwriter Lissie channels her Midwestern roots in her new release, "My Wild West," her third studio album. The newcomer has had a lot of luck getting songs from her past two albums placed in films and TV shows. But this time, she said, "the moment I decided not to make an album was when I really started to make the album. That took all the pressure off. The songs turned out to be more personal because I wasn't adhering to a strict set schedule." She starts the album with "Hollywood," her new home, and ends it with "Ojai," a tribute to her old home. In "Hollywood" she admits she "fell in love with California, fell in love with the dream." The title song finds Lissie promising she hasn't lost her roots even though she's so far from home, although she's going rogue in the "Wild West." Her "Hero" comes across a tumbleweed-laden country landscape. The howl of coyotes opens "Sun Keeps Risin'," a song Lissie wrote about her aunt who died of ALS. Percussion keeps "Don't You Give Up On Me," moving, as Lissie sings about the one she "left you on the coast for something only I can see." She sizzles in "Stay," as she asks, "can you smell my desperation from miles and miles away? Can you tell I like temptation..." The sonorous "Daughters' is about Liberian peace activist and Nobel Prize winner Leymah Gbowee. Acoustic guitar draws you into the sad love song about distance not threatening their love, whether they are "Together or Apart," and lightens up the breezy, "Go For a Walk." She's broken, no obit, in "Shroud," and finishes the album with an ode to her home, the catchy "Ojai." Lissie hits the road this spring, traveling from Los Angeles to Texas, Tennessee to Atlanta, and then hitting locations on the East Coast.
(Lionboy Records/Thirty Tigers)