“I’ve been in a band with Elton John since I was 13, but he only just found out,” Brandi Carlile joked in an interview with CBS last month. As a Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (1975) superfan, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter from Washington (whose solo work has spanned everything from indie-folk to country-rock) has the British icon’s style embedded in her bones. So on Who Believes in Angels? she leans comfortably into the paternal bombast of his bluesy-boppy AOR, her rich, clear (and higher) vocals adding melodic boosters to the Rocket Man’s deep, earnest rumble. You’ll probably have heard their wholesome, interlocking power balladry in action on the radio-friendly single “Never Too Late”, hymning the carpe diem joys of “a slow dance on a carousel/ A walk in the snow.”
The pair have been friends for two decades – taking family holidays together with their spouses and kids – and last collaborated on John’s 2021 duets album, Lockdown Sessions. Previous sessions, however, saw them writing and recording separately. For Who Believes in Angels?, they holed up together in a studio for 20 days with John’s brother-in-arms lyricist Bernie Taupin and producer Andrew Watt (who was behind the desk for “Hold Me Closer”, John’s 2021 hit with Britney Spears). Carlile got to see John’s famous temper as he smashed up an iPad and tore up some of her lyrics in frustration: “Predictable! Cliche! F*** off, Brandi!”. It’s all on camera, the first time John has allowed an album’s entire recording process to be filmed. Taupin, inured to such outbursts, apparently had to take Carlile out for whiskey sours to destress the woman John believes has brought him back to musical life.
John admits he hasn’t watched all of the footage, but it will likely serve as a helpful reminder for fans of the creative distress behind many of his songs. Otherwise, it’s easy to forget, given the infectious ease with which he plays and sings. Many of the tracks on this album feel as though they’ve been swilling around the Radio 2 drivetime playlist for decades. That’s part of the intention – to recreate the playfulness and sense of fun heard on some of John’s Seventies gems. Watt borrowed the drum kit used on 1973’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (bought by Hollywood actor Ben Stiller at auction), while Carlile pinned up posters of vintage John tours on the studio walls. You can hear the feedback loop of John in his platform-kicking pomp in the blast of the title track.
The record opens with “The Rose of Laura Nyro”, a tribute to one of John’s idols, the late California singer-songwriter who died in 1997, aged 49. It’s a track that hovers in an electric fog of proggy retro synths and big, gurning guitar noodling before John’s piano weighs anchor. When Carlile’s voice sweetens the scene – direct in the foreground, hazy in the backing vocals – there are echoes of The Carpenters. John brings a little glam stomp to his old pub piano on “Little Richard’s Bible”. Meanwhile, “Swing for the Fences” is an uptempo LGBT+ anthem with a rather chugging melody, fortunately elevated by the passionately unified force of the singers’ voices. There are echoes of “Tiny Dancer” in the reflective rolls of the piano runs between verses of “Never Too Late” as the septuagenarian star defies mortality in Taupin’s words: “F*** off, heaven’s gate!”
The pair embrace roadhouse jukebox Americana on several tracks; on others it’s country gospel with “A Little Light” and twangier country rock on “The River Man” and “Someone To Belong To”. Solo moments sparkle. Carlile’s tenderly fingerpicked song for the eldest of her two daughters, Evangeline (11) looks forward to a time when she will “find your own records, choose what you believe” while reassuring her: “I would know you anywhere/ I found myself in you.” It’s such a lightly, deftly delivered tune, and so generous of spirit, that it made me cry.
John also moistens the eyeballs on the solo piano closer, “When This Old World Is Done With Me”. Over gentle washes of ivory, he reminds us that “none of this came easy/ The shadows, the curtains, or the light…” You can hear his voice crack as he hits the chorus, asking that, “When I close my eyes, release me like an ocean wave, return me to the tide.” The album’s direct confrontation with ageing and death serves to intensify these artists’ joyful, companionable celebration of life. Outsized, old-school, dad-rockin’ fun.
