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Label: Eagles Recording Company
Sound/Style: Ultra-clean, vocal-driven adult contemporary pop and country-rock
By Steve Morley
When The Eagles first hit the airwaves in 1972, their easygoing country-rock made listeners feel like California was the place you ought to be. Their burnished harmony vocals brought sufficient comfort to conceal the bittersweet and sometimes cutting undertone that began emerging in their mid-period hits. Their split personality was fully evident by 1976’s disillusioned Hotel California, which decried the cultural shift toward superficiality and cutthroat materialism. Ironically, the band’s first recording in 28 years, Long Road Out of Eden, is being sold exclusively through Wal-Mart, a move that has elicited some criticism. It’s a different world now, and the breezy spirit of the early hits is accordingly absent, though the radio-ready Eagles sound is again airborne, if not consistently soaring, on 20 pristinely recorded tracks.
The veteran band seems aware of its age and old-school status on offerings like “Waiting in the Weeds,” the Mexicali-flavored “It’s Your World Now,” and the tropical pop of “The Last Good Time in Town,” Joe Walsh’s dryly comical and slightly paranoid turn on staying home. “Fast Company” cautions pop's current tabloid brigade and reminds them that their elders know a little more than they do about the shelf life of youth and high visibility: “Lookin’ up the road ahead/ You can’t see very far/ Remember where you come from/ Remember who you are/ Be careful what you say/ Be careful who you trust/ This world is beautiful/ This world is dangerous/ Fast company, fast company/ You’re goin’ nowhere fast.”
Don Henley rejoins former songwriting partner Glenn Frey on this and several other songs, but it’s Henley’s familiar cynicism that dominates the album’s most socially conscious moments. (“Driving down the American highway/ Through the litter and the wreckage and the cultural junk/ Bloated with entitlement, loaded on propaganda/ And now we’re driving dazed and drunk.”)
He depicts a lonely and conflicted American soldier fighting in Iraq on the title cut, contrasting it with scenes of petroleum-rich fat cats, the likes of whom Henley broadly implies have planted the seeds of society’s deterioration. Henley’s observations have merit, but they can come off as smug, as with “Frail Grasp on the Big Picture,” an indictment of ignorance in today’s culture that offers accusations but no constructive solutions. Among the scapegoats is politicized American religion, which Henley depicts as exclusive and skewed by entitlement. (“And we pray to our Lord, who we know is American/ He reigns from on high; He speaks to us through middlemen/ And He shepherds His flock/ We sing out and we praise His name/ He supports us in war; He presides over football games.”)
Glenn Frey provides an antidote to the record’s creeping pessimism on “You Are Not Alone,” a gentle march that promises rescue from a fearsome world in the form of faithful friendship. (“I know sometimes you feel so helpless/ Sometimes you feel like you can’t win/ Sometimes you feel so isolated/ You’ll never have to feel that way again/ You are not alone…”)
As Henley seems to suggest in the biting lyric of “Business As Usual,” The Eagles are now as much a brand as a band. The return of their classic style on Long Road Out of Eden gives fans ample reason to celebrate, though it’s hard to escape the sense that Henley and company, while rebuilding the perfect beast for the 21st century, have left out part of its original heart.
Audio Clips
"No More Walks in the Wood"
"How Long"
"Busy Being Fabulous"
"What Do I Do With My Heart"
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