Songs From the West Coast. (Music review: timeless capsules).

Songs From the West Coast * Elton John * Rocket/Universal Records

Sincerity is a tall order for a pop star to pull off album after album, especially when his public image is as a tart-tongued, willful brat. But lyricist Bernie Taupin has been wiping that smirk off Elton John's face for going on four decades now. John may be Eminem's gayest fan and the Dalai Lama's lamest critic, but put him at a piano and he's still a consummate song salesman, always with at least a few wares too appealing to dismiss.

Songs From the West Coast, John and Taupin's latest collaboration, finds the duo skillfully mining some of their best old lodes for new nuggets. You like the cinematic impressions of Madman Across the Water? Check out the AIDS elegy "The Ballad of the Boy in the Red Shoes" ("I'm stoned in the twilight / Screaming on the inside / Give me your water / Help me survive"). Have fond memories of the aching, solipsistic "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word"? Spin that raw first single, "I Want Love" ("I want love / Just a different kind"). Want Tumbleweed Connection rootsiness? Here comes "The Wasteland," a sweet blues-pop confection. Funky faux philosophy a la "Grey Seal"? This go-round it's the countrified "Birds" ("How come birds / Don't fall from the sky when they die?").

This is comfort music, mind you, not the sprightly pop of Don't Shoot Me ... Taupin can no longer maintain the luminous economy of his 1970s lyrics (who can?), and John's tunes are catchy and warm rather than fresh and kinetic. But for the first time in a decade, John eschews dense production in favor of a cleaner, Elton John Band--like soundscape, reminiscent of his last album named in honor of the western United States, Caribou. It's his delivery of 12 well-crafted songs, not layers of strings and backing voices, that paints in the emotions and pulls in the listener.

That's what is so gutsy about Songs From the West Coast. It relies on neither retro appeal (Earth to Stevie Nicks) nor on MTV-friendly window dressing (paging Michael Jackson). It's a record in a bubble, a heartfelt effort immune to the fever of the moment. Steadfast and nourishing without any breakout VH1-ready hooks, Songs may or may not catch on with the Starbucks-addicted record buyers it's blended to satisfy. But when Elton John sits down to honor Matthew Shepard with the elegiac "American Triangle" ("Three lives drift on different winds / Two lives mined, one life spent"), the song is almost as timeless and as moving as the story it tells.

Thirty-five years on, John still sings it like he means it.