Elton John is working with T-Bone Burnett on a new album titled The Diving Board that is being described as similar to the straight forward, unembellished approach he took on his earliest releases - news that should be welcome to a lot of the fans that lost interest in his music as he ventured into increasingly overproduced pop.  John calls the album, which he expects to have ready for a September release, '...the most exciting solo record I've done in a long, long time.'
According to Rolling Stone magazine, it was Burnett's idea to strip away all of the embellishments typical of most of Elton's work for decades in favor of supplementing his piano with just bass (Raphael Saadiq) drums (Jay Bellerose) and guitar (Doyle Bramhall).  The approach inspired John, who penned a half dozen songs in a couple of days, added them to ones longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin supplied, picked ten and recorded them in less than a week. He describes himself as being as psyched about the album as he was with The Union, the release he and Burnett did with Leon Russell.
RollingStone.com

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