Record Reviews
📝 2096 reviews| Artist | Title | Review |
|---|---|---|
| Michael Brecker | Directions In Music | <p>This album was recorded live in Toronto during the 2001 Directions in Music tour that featured Herbie Hancock (piano), Michael Brecker (tenor sax) and Roy Hargrove (trumpet and flugelhorn), with Brian Blade (drums) and John Patitucci (bass) rounding out the quintet. The idea of the sold-out tour was to pay tribute to Miles Davis and John Coltrane, or, more specifically, to honor their creative spirit. If this recording is an indication of what went down at those dates, then the tour was certainly an artistic as well as commercial triumph. <i>Live at Massey Hall</i> consists of eight tracks, all of which merit close attention. For an extended listen to Brecker and Hargrove, however, you can't beat "So What/Impressions," a Davis/Coltrane mélange. The song opens with Patitucci working a cool little one-minute bass solo, and then Hargrove and Brecker assay a joint thematic statement. Hargrove then steps off into a sparsely phrased solo (indeed a bit reminiscent of Miles), pushing the amplitude of his sound and piling up notes with amazing agility. Brecker answers Hargrove with a tenor sax solo that gets loose very quickly and holds a nervy edge for the duration, eventually achieving a stuttering angularity that returns the quintet to the melody line.</p><p>Brecker's seven-and-a-half minute, unaccompanied solo on "Naima" is sheer tenor sax virtuosity. The ensemble's powerful rendering of Coltrane's "Transition," undertaken at a breakneck pace, is a blizzard of intensely swinging solos, and they do it again on the Brecker original "D Trane." Hancock's comping wizardry, extra tasty on "Misstery," is a constant, and when he takes his solo turns, his playing is masterful and full of very good ideas.</p><p><em>Live at Massey Hall</em> is a fine release for Verve and an album bound to make a powerful impression on jazz fans.</p><p>—<strong>Philip Van Vleck -- CDNOW</strong></p><hr/><p><em>Directions in Music</em> marks Herbie Hancock's all-star tribute to Miles Davis and John Coltrane. It's clearly a chance for Hancock to return once again to his creative roots, when he was in Davis's great quintet of the mid-'60s, and he has excellent companions for the journey in Michael Brecker and Roy Hargrove, the tenor saxophonist and trumpeter who clearly demonstrate their inspiration in Coltrane and Miles. The CD begins with a reprise of Hancock's "Sorcerer" from his Miles period, with bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade, who were so crucial a part of Wayne Shorter's <em>Footprints Live</em>, and prove themselves just as important here. Blade is especially driving, pressing Hancock and the horns to complex creative dialogue. The synthesis of "So What/Impressions," already closely linked tunes, benefits from the input of some fresh creative thinking, while Brecker's long cadenza on "Naima" is an effective invocation of Coltrane's intrepid virtuosity. Over 78 minutes in length, this is energetic, sometimes brilliant music, in many ways resembling Hancock's own classic, <em>Maiden Voyage</em>.</p> <p>—<strong>Stuart Broomer -- Amazon</strong></p> |
| Michael Brecker | Pilgrimage | <P>Given the heartbreaking context in which this album was released — this was the final recording by saxophonist Michael Brecker, who died of myelodysplastic syndrome and leukemia only a few months before its release — there might be a certain temptation to cut it some slack for sentimental reasons. However, leniency is hardly needed. Leading a group comprised of jaw-dropping talents (pianists Herbie Hancock and Brad Mehldau, guitarist Pat Metheny, bassist John Patitucci, drummer Jack DeJohnette) and playing for the first time a program consisting entirely of original compositions, Brecker delivers an emotionally rich and startlingly powerful album of straight-ahead modern jazz that will stand as his musical epitaph and will effectively confound anyone who has ever been tempted to dismiss him as a mere jazz-pop fusioneer. It will also frustrate anyone looking for maudlin emotion or even any obvious product of existential angst; the only concession to sentiment here is on the title of a ballad, "When Can I Kiss You Again?," a quote from Brecker's teenage son during a period in his treatment when his family was not allowed to touch him. But even that track, with its unusual chord progression and sometimes rather arid solos, retains a core of tough-mindedness within the tenderness. Most of the rest of the program consists of uptempo and medium-tempo burners that swing with a powerful sense of urgency and life, and precious little foreshadowing of the tragedy that all involved knew was soon to come. This is a brilliant and inspiring album — and would be whether or not it had anything to do with the death of one of the great figures in American jazz.</P><P>— <B>Rick Anderson</B></P><HR><P>Tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker lost his ongoing bout with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a rare bone marrow cancer, in January 2007. Pilgrimage provides one last chance to hear him in the company of like-minded souls. Joined by a who's who of mainstream jazz royalty, guitarist Pat Metheny, pianists Herbie Hancock and Brad Mehldau, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Jack DeJohnette accompany the saxophonist on this superlative session.</P><P>Brecker began his career as a session player in the early 1970s, something he continued to do throughout his career, to the chagrin of jazz purists. Having accompanied everyone from James Taylor and Joni Mitchell to McCoy Tyner and Charlie Haden, his ability to keep a foot in each camp made him an in-demand sideman. Combining John Coltrane's sheets of sound approach with funky soul, he established himself as one of the most distinctive voices of his generation.</P><P>His first album of all original tunes, Pilgrimage is also his most personal. Haunting ballads like “When Can I Kiss You Again?” and the churning “Five Months from Midnight” resonate with simmering emotion, but never subsume the session in mordant retroflection.</P><P>His illness does not appear to have hindered his playing abilities on this date at all. Sounding inspired and confident, his tone is strong and buoyant, his phrasing uplifting and intense, his fighting spirit apparent.</P><P>That spirit generates considerable heat, with the majority of the album propulsive and invigorating. Brisk post-bop (”The Mean Time”) and angular modernism (”Anagram”) alternate with simmering funk (”Tumbleweed”) and proto-fusion (”Pilgrimage”), often meeting halfway (”Cardinal Rule”). Delivering these tunes with elastic group interplay, the intuitive camaraderie shared between these artists is electrifying; rarely do musicians, even of this caliber, play to such heights.</P><P>DeJohnette is a marvel, his ceaselessly inventive patterns and thunderous palpitations are astonishing in their enthusiasm. His unbridled passion lifts the bandstand; this is one of his finest moments on record. Patiticci's bass resounds forcefully as Metheny unfurls billowy post-bop phrases with serpentine proficiency, even unleashing some processed distortion with his guitar synth. Splitting duties at the piano, Hancock and Mehldau provide a fascinating study in contrasts.</P><P>Michael Brecker's passing at age 57 is unfortunate. While some of his work over the years flirted with middling cross-over appeal, this uncompromising final statement is unquestionably from the heart. Pilgrimage is a stirring and celebratory jazz record, perhaps the finest of his career.</P><P>Track listing: The Mean Time; Five Months from Midnight; Anagram; Tumbleweed; When Can I Kiss You Again?; Cardinal Rule; Half Moon Lane; Loose Threads; Pilgrimage.</P><P>Personnel: Michael Brecker: tenor saxophone, EWI; Pat Metheny: guitars; Herbie Hancock: piano (1, 5, 6, 9); Brad Mehldau: piano (2, 3, 4, 6, 7); John Patitucci: bass; Jack DeJohnette: drums.</P><P>— <B>Troy Collins</B></P><HR><P>The importance of saxophonist Michael Brecker's final recording, Pilgrimage, is densely multidimensional. The romantically inclined will attach significance to the fact that the nine compositions were conceived and recorded while Brecker was aware of the gravity of his final illness. Pilgrimage falls into an artistic/musical category that includes such disparate music as Mozart's Requiem, Puccini's Turandot, Billie Holiday's Lady In Satin and Johnny Cash's American Recordings, Volumes 5 & 6. All of these examples were conceived during the artists' autumnal periods and, in these cases, represent something of pinnacles in their outputs.</P><P>High art in the face of destiny is not always the case, however. June Carter Cash's final Wildwood Flower, while heartfelt, did the singer disfavor because she was obviously ill during the recording. Anita O'Day's final recording, Indestructible, similarly sincere, was recorded much too far past the singer's prime, and the aesthetic value of trumpeter Chet Baker's final recordings remains up for debate. So, what of Michael Brecker's final output?</P><P>In 2005, Brecker was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome, a diverse collection of hematologic disease all sharing in common the inappropriate production of blood cells and their propensities for transforming into acute myelogenous leukemia. Unable to find a suitable stem-cell donor, Brecker passed away on Saturday, January 13, 2007. While Brecker did remain active during the period of his illness, appearing on Beatle Jazz's With A Little Help From Our Friends and Leni Stern's Alu Maye (Have You Heard), he had been inactive a year before these recordings.</P><P>Thus, the artist's largest late effort was reserved for Pilgrimage. He is joined by pianists Herbie Hancock and Brad Mehldau, guitarist Pat Metheny, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Jack DeJohnette, all sacred to Brecker's generation of jazz musicians. The notable absence of Randy Brecker is acknowledged for the life-long collaboration he had with his brother in their various music endeavors. Save that, Brecker chose his group wisely as the results of the recording reveal.</P><P>Brecker's tenor tone is strong and muscular. His composing is the best of his career. His melodic head-lines are organic, approximating a flock of small birds flying scattered one second and then in unison the next. Brecker and Metheny share a Bill Evans-Scott LaFaro empathy throughout the recording, both buoyed by the impressionistic piano of Hancock and Mehldau. The heart of the disc exists in its center with the pieces “Tumbleweed” and “When Can I Kiss You Again.” On the former, Brecker sets up a fast rolling theme and harmonics over which the soloists take quick flight including an aggressively distorted Metheny solo that gives way to one by Brecker. The rhythm section of Patitucci and DeJohnette creates a funky tonk with powerful momentum. No matter what, Brecker is in complete command.</P><P>“When Can I Kiss You Again” is Brecker's introspective lullaby to his children, whom he could not see while in medical isolation. Again, his superior composing provides a carefully complex melodic introduction with a modal concept over which to solo. Composition and improvisation weave in and out of one another; constructing a silken fabric over which Metheny gives one his most inspired and introverted solos. Hancock provides his trademark abstraction as solo, depicting anxiousness as music. Brecker's solo is middle to low register and impeccably structured (as are all of his solos). The disc's title cut is a moody, Coltrane-esque meditation over electric piano with bass and drums occupying all sonic spaces. The piece grows in density and freedom as an open improvisation develops over the barest harmonic structure. And that was just the extended introduction. Brecker pulls all involved into an extended obbligato that is serpentine and seamless.</P><P>How does history view Michael Brecker? Many consider him to be the most important tenor saxophone player since John Coltrane. This is at the expense of Wayne Shorter, though Shorter generationally overlaps Coltrane. I would come closer to declaring John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter and Michael Brecker the apex of the tenor saxophone since Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster. That excludes a lot and that exclusion is necessary. Brecker's importance lies in his universality. When I listen to Oliver Nelson's The Blues And The Abstract Truth (Impulse, 1961), I think of that music as a jazz soundtrack of the 1960s. It had that sound that listeners would immediately identify as jazz: so with Pilgrimage and the opening of the 21st Century. Michael Brecker's final recording is a finely crafted jazz soundtrack for a new millennium, serving in honor of the late saxophonist and all of jazz.</P><P>— <B>C. Michael Bailey.</B></P><HR><P>Michael Brecker's tragic death in January 2007, at the age of fifty-seven, robbed the world of perhaps the most influential saxophonist to emerge since the equally untimely passing of John Coltrane. It's easy to forget that he was one of the pop/rock world's most called-upon studio players, recording on hundreds of albums with artists including James Taylor, Paul Simon and Eric Clapton. But it's his prodigious body of work in the jazz realm that will be his most enduring legacy.</P><P>It's easy to want Pilgrimage to be one of Brecker's best recordings out of a purely emotional response to his passing. While the knowledge that this is his final recording creates an unassailable sense of loss, the fact remains that the writing on Pilgrimage stands as some of his best, and if he was in a weakened state you'd never know it. Brecker sounds as strong as he ever did—stronger, in fact.</P><P>For this last session Brecker called upon old friends—guitarist Pat Metheny, bassist John Patitucci, drummer Jack DeJohnette and pianist Herbie Hancock (who plays on four tracks). He also collaborates, for the first time, with pianist Brad Mehldau on five tracks. That Hancock and Mehldau are vastly different players is an understatement; yet Pilgrimage remains cohesive and focused, with both players bringing their own inimitable strengths to the material.</P><P>Brecker's unmistakable writing style stems, at times, from a post-Coltrane modality, but there's a greater complexity and distinctive language. Solo space abounds, but Brecker's ambitious writing is longer-form, with all manner of twists and turns that bring out some of the best performances on record from everyone involved. When DeJohnette takes one of his most energetic solos on the rhythmically and harmonically shifting “Anagram,” it's over a metrically challenging piano/bass ostinato that ultimately turns contrapuntal when Metheny and Brecker reenter.</P><P>“Tumbleweed,” with Metheny's signature synth tone, bears comparison to the guitarist's own “Song for Bilbao” in that it's an altered blues (also featuring a surprisingly funky solo from Mehldau), while the slinky groove of “Loose Threads” finds Hancock straddling the line between greater abstraction and more grounded soulfulness. Metheny seems to be inspired towards greater risks, with some of his most evocative playing in recent years.</P><P>Brecker takes the first solo on the opening salvo of “The Mean Time,” quickly dispensing with any notion that illness had compromised the visceral power that was a defining characteristic of his playing. “When Can I Kiss You Again?” may be a slow tempo tune with softer edges, but Brecker manages to mine surprising depths of emotion here as well.</P><P>They say that music has healing power. It may not have been able to prevent the inevitable with Brecker's illness; but for brief time, a scant five months before his death, it's clear that music gave him the strength to record a watershed album that represents a remarkable end to an equally extraordinary musical life.</P><P>— <B>John Kelman</B></P> |
| Jim Brewer | Jim Brewer | |
| David Bromberg | How Late'll Ya Play Till | |
| David Bromberg | My Own House | <p>As of the late 1990s, guitarist and fiddler David Bromberg was in musical semi-retirement, supplementing his day job (making his living buying and selling American-made violins) with the odd club gig. But in the 1970s, he had a thriving career as both a bandleader and a sideman, having played on seminal recordings by Bob Dylan, the Eagles, and Jerry Jeff Walker, among others. This disc includes two of his early albums: first, the acoustic and largely solo My Own House, on which he plays a program that ranges from traditional Scottish and American fiddle tunes through Delta blues and songs by Hoagy Carmichael and Phil Spector. Talk about Americana.</p><p>— <strong>Rick Anderson</strong></p> |
| Jonitha Brooke | Plumb | |
| Big Bill Broonzy | Big Bill's Blues | |
| James Brown | There It Is | |
| Jackson Browne | Return Of The Common Man | |
| Jackson Browne | Saturate Before Using | <p>One of the reasons that Jackson Browne's first album is among the most auspicious debuts in pop music history is that it doesn't sound like a debut. Although only 23, Browne had kicked around the music business for several years, writing and performing as a member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and as Nico's backup guitarist, among other gigs, while many artists recorded his material. So, if this doesn't sound like someone's first batch of songs, it's not. Browne had developed an unusual use of language, studiedly casual yet full of striking imagery, and a post-apocalyptic viewpoint to go with it. He sang with a calm certainty over spare, discretely placed backup -- piano, acoustic guitar, bass, drums, congas, violin, harmony vocals -- that highlighted the songs and always seemed about to disappear. In song after song, Browne described the world as a desert in need of moisture, and this wet/dry dichotomy carried over into much of the imagery. In "Doctor My Eyes," the album's most propulsive song and a Top Ten hit, he sang, "Doctor, my eyes/Cannot see the sky/Is this the prize/For having learned how not to cry?" If Browne's outlook was cautious, its expression was original. His conditional optimism seemed to reflect hard experience, and in the early '70s, the aftermath of the '60s, a lot of his listeners shared that perspective. Like any great artist, Browne articulated the tenor of his times. But the album has long since come to seem a timeless collection of reflective ballads touching on still-difficult subjects -- suicide (explicitly), depression and drug use (probably), spiritual uncertainty and desperate hope -- all in calm, reasoned tones, and all with an amazingly eloquent sense of language. Jackson Browne's greater triumph is that, having perfectly expressed its times, it transcended those times as well. (The album features a cover depicting Browne's face on a water bag -- an appropriate reference to its desert/water imagery -- containing the words "saturate before using." Inevitably, many people began to refer to the self-titled album by that phrase, and when it was released on CD, it nearly became official -- both the disc and the spine of the jewel box read Saturate Before Using.)</p><p>—<strong>William Ruhlmann</strong></p> |
| Jackson Browne | For Everyman | <p>Jackson Browne faced the nearly insurmountable task of following a masterpiece in making his second album. Having cherry-picked years of songwriting the first time around, he turned to some of his secondary older material, which was still better than most people's best and, ironically, more accessible -- notably such songs as "These Days," which had been covered six times already, dating back to Nico's Chelsea Girl album in 1967, and "Take It Easy," a co-composition with the Eagles' Glenn Frey that had been a Top 40 hit for the group in 1972. Browne unsuccessfully looked for another hit single with the up-tempo "Red Neck Friend," reminisced about meeting his wife and starting a family in the coy "Ready or Not," and, at the end, finally came up with a new song to rank with those on the first album in the philosophical title track, which reportedly was his more positive reply to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's "Wooden Ships." (David Crosby sang harmony.) Musically, the album was still restrained, but not as austere as Jackson Browne, as the singer had hooked up with multi-instrumentalist David Lindley, who would introduce interesting textures to his music on a variety of stringed instruments for the next several years. All of which is to say that For Everyman was a less consistent collection than Browne's debut album. But Browne's songwriting ability remained impressive.</p><p>—<strong>William Ruhlmann</strong></p> |
| Jackson Browne | Late For The Sky | <p>On his third album, Jackson Browne returned to the themes of his debut record (love, loss, identity, apocalypse) and, amazingly, delved even deeper into them. "For a Dancer," a meditation on death like the first album's "Song for Adam," is a more eloquent eulogy; "Farther On" extends the "moving on" point of "Looking Into You"; "Before the Deluge" is a glimpse beyond the apocalypse evoked on "My Opening Farewell" and the second album's "For Everyman." If Browne had seemed to question everything in his first records, here he even questioned himself. "For me some words come easy, but I know that they don't mean that much," he sang on the opening track, "Late for the Sky," and added in "Farther On," "I'm not sure what I'm trying to say." Yet his seeming uncertainty and self-doubt reflected the size and complexity of the problems he was addressing in these songs, and few had ever explored such territory, much less mapped it so well. "The Late Show," the album's thematic center, doubted but ultimately affirmed the nature of relationships, while by the end, "After the Deluge," if "only a few survived," the human race continued nonetheless. It was a lot to put into a pop music album, but Browne stretched the limits of what could be found in what he called "the beauty in songs," just as Bob Dylan had a decade before.</p><p>—<strong>William Ruhlmann</strong></p> |
| Jackson Browne | Late For The Sky | <p>On his third album, Jackson Browne returned to the themes of his debut record (love, loss, identity, apocalypse) and, amazingly, delved even deeper into them. "For a Dancer," a meditation on death like the first album's "Song for Adam," is a more eloquent eulogy; "Farther On" extends the "moving on" point of "Looking Into You"; "Before the Deluge" is a glimpse beyond the apocalypse evoked on "My Opening Farewell" and the second album's "For Everyman." If Browne had seemed to question everything in his first records, here he even questioned himself. "For me some words come easy, but I know that they don't mean that much," he sang on the opening track, "Late for the Sky," and added in "Farther On," "I'm not sure what I'm trying to say." Yet his seeming uncertainty and self-doubt reflected the size and complexity of the problems he was addressing in these songs, and few had ever explored such territory, much less mapped it so well. "The Late Show," the album's thematic center, doubted but ultimately affirmed the nature of relationships, while by the end, "After the Deluge," if "only a few survived," the human race continued nonetheless. It was a lot to put into a pop music album, but Browne stretched the limits of what could be found in what he called "the beauty in songs," just as Bob Dylan had a decade before.</p><p>—<strong>William Ruhlmann</strong></p> |
| Jackson Browne | The Pretender | <p>On The Pretender, Jackson Browne took a step back from the precipice so well defined on his first three albums, but doing so didn't seem to make him feel any better. Employing a real producer, Jon Landau, for the first time, Browne made what sounded like a real contemporary rock record, but this made his songs less effective; the ersatz Mexican arrangement of "Linda Paloma" and the bouncy second half of "Daddy's Tune," with its horn charts and guitar solo, undercut the lyrics. The man who had delved so deeply into life's abyss on his earlier albums was in search of escape this time around, whether by crying ("Here Come Those Tears Again"), sleeping ("Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate"), or making peace with estranged love ones ("The Only Child," "Daddy's Tune"). None of it worked, however, and when Browne came to the final track -- traditionally the place on his albums where he summed up his current philosophical stance -- he delivered "The Pretender," a cynical, sarcastic treatise on moneygrubbing and the shallow life of the suburbs. Primarily inner-directed, the song's defeatist tone demands rejection, but it is also a quintessential statement of its time, the post-Watergate '70s; dire as that might be, you had to admire that kind of honesty, even as it made you wince.</p><p>—<strong>William Ruhlmann</strong></p> |
| Jackson Browne | Running On Empty | <p>Having acknowledged a certain creative desperation on The Pretender, Jackson Browne lowered his sights (and raised his commercial appeal) considerably with Running On Empty, which was more a concept album about the road than an actual live album, even though its songs were sometimes recorded on stage (and sometimes on the bus or in the hotel).</p><p> Although unlike most live albums, it consisted of previously unrecorded songs, Browne had less creative participation on this album than on any he ever made, solely composing only two songs, co - writing four others, and covering another four. And he had less to say - - the title song and leadoff track neatly conjoined his artistic and escapist themes. Figuratively and creatively, he was out of gas, but like "the pretender," still had to make a living.</p><p>The songs covered all aspects of touring, from Danny O'Keefe's "The Road," which detailed romantic encounters, and "Rosie" (co - written by Browne and his manager Donald Miller ), in which a soundman pays tribute to auto - eroticism, to, well, "Cocaine," to the travails of being a roadie ("The Load - Out").</p><p>Audience noises, humorous asides, loose playing - - they were all part of a rough - around - the - edges musical evocation of the rock 'n' roll touring life. It was not what fans had come to expect from Browne, of course, but the disaffected were more than outnumbered by the newly converted. (It didn't hurt that " Running On Empty" and "The Load - Out" / "Stay" both became Top 40 hits.) As a result, Jackson Browne's least ambitious, but perhaps most accessible, album ironically became his biggest seller. But it is not characteristic of his other work: for many, it will be the only Browne album they will want to own, just as others always will regard it disdainfully as Jackson Browne Lite.</p><p>—<strong>William Ruhlmann</strong></p> |
| Jackson Browne | Running On Empty | <p>Having acknowledged a certain creative desperation on The Pretender, Jackson Browne lowered his sights (and raised his commercial appeal) considerably with Running On Empty, which was more a concept album about the road than an actual live album, even though its songs were sometimes recorded on stage (and sometimes on the bus or in the hotel).</p><p> Although unlike most live albums, it consisted of previously unrecorded songs, Browne had less creative participation on this album than on any he ever made, solely composing only two songs, co - writing four others, and covering another four. And he had less to say - - the title song and leadoff track neatly conjoined his artistic and escapist themes. Figuratively and creatively, he was out of gas, but like "the pretender," still had to make a living.</p><p>The songs covered all aspects of touring, from Danny O'Keefe's "The Road," which detailed romantic encounters, and "Rosie" (co - written by Browne and his manager Donald Miller ), in which a soundman pays tribute to auto - eroticism, to, well, "Cocaine," to the travails of being a roadie ("The Load - Out").</p><p>Audience noises, humorous asides, loose playing - - they were all part of a rough - around - the - edges musical evocation of the rock 'n' roll touring life. It was not what fans had come to expect from Browne, of course, but the disaffected were more than outnumbered by the newly converted. (It didn't hurt that " Running On Empty" and "The Load - Out" / "Stay" both became Top 40 hits.) As a result, Jackson Browne's least ambitious, but perhaps most accessible, album ironically became his biggest seller. But it is not characteristic of his other work: for many, it will be the only Browne album they will want to own, just as others always will regard it disdainfully as Jackson Browne Lite.</p><p>—<strong>William Ruhlmann</strong></p> |
| Jackson Browne | I'm Alive | <p>Jackson Browne abandoned politics for the war between the sexes on I'm Alive. "I have no problem with this crooked world," he sang; "...My problem is you." The album detailed the ups and downs of a relationship, starting with the defiant post-breakup title track and then doubling back to describe irritation ("My Problem Is You"), devotion ("Everywhere I Go," "I'll Do Anything"), increasing tension ("Miles Away," "Too Many Angels"), separation ("Take This Rain," "Two of Me, Two of You"), forgiveness ("Sky Blue and Black"), and finally acceptance ("All Good Things"). Longtime fans welcomed the album as a return in style to the days of Late for the Sky, but a closer model might have been Hold Out, a complementary album concerned with the flowering of an affair rather than the withering of one, since Browne eschewed the greater philosophical implications of romance and, falling back on stock imagery (angels, rain), failed to achieve an originality of expression. Just as, in Hold Out, one wasn't so much inspired as informed that Browne had found love, on I'm Alive, one wasn't so much moved as told that he'd lost it. While it was good news that he wasn't tilting at windmills anymore, Browne did not make a full comeback with the album, despite a couple of well-constructed songs.</p><p>—<strong>William Ruhlmann</strong></p> |
| Jackson Browne | Jackson Browne Live | |
| Jackson Browne | Very Best Of Jackson Browne | <p>Over the past three decades, Jackson Browne has created and voiced many of the most literate and emotionally resonant compositions in popular music—and sold more than 15 million albums, including the seven-times platinum Running On Empty and the #1 Hold Out. This year Browne's artistry is celebrated with his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and with this new retrospective from Rhino. Browne's first-ever double-disc set compiles hits, singles, and choice album cuts from his acclaimed catalog, spotlighting both insightful works of personal introspection and passionately delivered songs of social and political observation. The 2002 recipient of the prestigious John Steinbeck Award (honoring those exemplifying the famed writer's environmental and social ideals), Browne is a mature artist and world citizen whose work shines on this long-awaited collection.</p> |
| Jackson Browne | The Naked Ride Home | <p>One of the most eloquent singer-songwriters of the '70s heyday of the movement, Jackson Browne has always been a master of deciphering what is written on the human heart. On his first outing in six years, Browne again waxes autobiographical, wandering through his extensive interior landscape and transforming his pain into art. But after three decades, his songs of elusive love lost and found have become a little bit wry and world-weary. Witness the bittersweet title song, where the details are so crisp and well drawn that it's difficult to believe that he didn't just lift them from his own life. Similarly, "The Night Inside Me" returns to some of the wrenching themes of 1975's <i>Late for the Sky</i> with fresh anger. But it is Jackson Browne's turbulent romantic history--his elevation of the small, significant details that make up a life, or more poignantly, show one unraveling--that defines his work, and which is in full flower here.</p> <p><b>--Jaan Uhelszki</b></p> |
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