Elton John's 'Wonderful Crazy Night' of the soul

"I've figured out where I went wrong," Elton John sings on Looking Up, a characteristically buoyant track on Wonderful Crazy Night  (* * * out of four). But as those titles and others on John's new album suggest, he's not dwelling on mistakes at the moment.

Out Feb. 5 — just in time for Valentine's Day — Night once again pairs John with producer T-Bone Burnett, his collaborator on 2013's The Diving Board, a relatively stripped-down, introspective effort widely hailed as a return to form. Night, which John co-produced, can also be thoughtful and serious-minded; but these songs — crafted with Bernie Taupin, John's writing partner of nearly 50 years — are resolute, almost defiant, in their emphasis on the positive.

There's an inspirational feel in much of the material, enhanced by the R&B roots that poke through, sometimes subtle but always solid. "It feels like flying when I see your face," John sings over soul-infected keyboards and sparkling guitar on Tambourine.  On the stately A Good Heart, horns purr as John pledges, "I'll be the moon/Inside your eyes."

This is not the subtlety-be-damned exuberance that has helped sustain John as a live performer and personality, but the contentment of a survivor relishing his good fortune. Since Diving Board was released, John — who will turn 69 in March — has married his longtime partner, David Furnish, with whom he has two young children; and a curious listener might well perceive a sense of both security and gratitude in songs such as the blissfully nostalgic Wonderful Crazy Night, spiced up by John's bluesy piano, or Free & Easy, with its still-moonstruck lyrics and lightly baroque arrangement.

There are more driving, muscular tunes such as the guitar-fueled England & America, and effervescent fare like the crisply melodic The Open Chord and Guilty Pleasure, a fittingly named bit of jangly pop which seems to tease a lover: "Hold out or still in doubt/What's it gonna be/Never a chance in a million years/Or you can't get enough of me?"

Whatever the case, Wonderful Crazy Me has the sound and spirit of a man who's grown comfortable in his own skin, but is still intent on moving forward. Or as John puts it on Looking Up, "Nowadays I'm thinking that/Life is wasted looking back."

Download: The Open Chord, Tambourine, Guilty Pleasure.