Retiring from the stage but not the studio, Elton John and Bernie Taupin push on with the knowledge time is not on their side. John admitted as much in a few sparse clips and interviews, and his work with Brandi Carlile appears to have rejuvenated him. For too long, John became a pop figurine. He was partnered with this star or that studio album because it was popular. Only in the last through years, through collaborations with Dua Lipa and Yard Act, as well as a keen ear for great up-and-comers, has John revealed himself not as a pop-chasing musician but an artist with a note or two for future talent. Carlile is a cemented figure in music, but it makes the upcoming album, Who Believes in Angels?, that much better. The titular lead single was a solid effort, as is Swing for the Fences.
John and Carlile is a grand partnership, and both do well to strip the pop conventions of their faux sincerity. They push through with a real charm and come out the other end with a solid pop-rock effort. The trouble with chart toppers is their gauge of public mood may be personal, but it needs to be so broad it obscures and casts a shadow on the original purpose of the song. Swing for the Fences may be an ultimately broad experience, but John and Carlile reel it back towards a sincere space. Carlile takes the lead on this but John has such a unique voice, as Carlile does too, that the blur together has them complement one another’s vocal choices. A country tinge from Carlile is what makes Swing for the Fences work so well, even when it drifts close to those pop-country inevitabilities.
But Swing for the Fences gets back on track with the steady momentum all solid pop records have. There is a sense of nostalgia underscoring Swing for the Fences, with reference to the Dodgers, where John played arguably one of his biggest performances. Deeper still is the refreshing yet light defiance heard throughout, that contrast between grey parking lots and pure picket fences. Each is an old-school part of the Americana image and Swing for the Fences certainly does little to break from that sound. John returns to those pop-rock roots but finds a new life for it. Nothing refreshing, but a neatness to it which gives Carlile the spotlight for most of the track. She makes the most of it and it is an ultimately enjoyable and light song.
John considers a few of these songs as sombre notes of a career in its twilight years, of a life closer to the end than the start. Swing for the Fences certainly feels as though this context weighs on it, but the lighter style detracts from what could have been a heavy-hitting piece. John has done it before with the defiant likes of I’m Still Standing, and though nobody is asking him to repeat that rebellious punch, there is hope for that same adrenalin rush, that same defiance. Swing for the Fences is not the miss it could have been but it is not as though John and Carlile knock it out of the park. Their album title single didn’t either, and that was a tad better. Still, there is a likeable consistency here, an earnestness which carries Who Believes in Angels? as a project over the line.
