Jackson Browne Albums (16)
'Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1 & 2'
Release Date 11/4/2008
Tracks 39
Label Inside
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
2008 was a busy year for Jackson Browne: first there was Solo Acoustic, Vol. 2 then Time the Conqueror, his first new studio offering in six years, and just in time for Christmas, this slipcase box containing both live acoustic records. The opening 28 seconds of Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1 are massive crowd applause and it's totally unnecessary. The music here speaks for itself. Whether or not one appreciates Browne's recorded catalog is immaterial; his gift as a songwriter is enigmatic, unassailable, and singular. There are 12 songs here from throughout his career, ranging from "These Days" and "For Everyman" to "Lives in the Balance" and "Looking East," and all points in between. There are numerous spoken and instrumental intros to the material; Browne is a comfortable communicator when it comes to sitting alone in front of an audience, though sometimes his humor is cynical and borders on bitter. The versions of "For a Dancer" and "The Pretender" are deeply moving, as are "These Days" and "Too Many Angels." That said, it would be easy to live without all these intros and those on the second volume, when the songs so easily speak for themselves. The second volume is a mirror image of the first since it features -- mostly -- songs from his later years. But it doesn't matter. Browne's later songs communicate so directly that, presented in this manner we can find ourselves wandering around in reverie, even if we've never heard them before. While there are a few "classic" tracks -- "Redneck Friend," "Something Fine," and "Somebody's Baby" (from the Fast Times at Ridgemont High soundtrack) -- most of this material comes from records after Hold Out. There are three tunes from the tragically ignored Naked Ride Home, which stack up seamlessly with his '70s material. "The Night Inside Me," "Casino Nation," and "My Stunning Mystery Companion," grace the beginning, middle, and end of this offering. Browne does travel back here; in fact, he goes all the way back to "Something Fine," off his debut, his performances of cuts from albums such as Looking East, I'm Alive, World in Motion, and Lives in the Balance offer listeners an opportunity to hear him at his most vulnerable yet confident. Like volume one, the spoken introductions to several numbers are overly long and don't necessarily translate well to CD. Presented like this, without any bonus material, fans who purchased either volume previously will have a decision to make, but for those who haven't, this is an ideal way to complement a greatest-hits record, or an ideal place to begin with Browne's work. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Time the Conqueror is Jackson Browne's first studio offering in six years. The last was 2002's Naked Ride Home for Elektra. Browne established his sound in the '70s and has made precious few adjustments, with the exception of a couple of records in the '80s where the keyboards and drum machines of the period were woven into his heady, West Coast pop, singer/songwriter mix. Whereas his '90s albums I'm Alive and Looking East, as well as Naked Ride Home, mirrored the personal concerns of his '70s records in more elegiac terms, Time the Conqueror returns in some ways to Browne's more overtly political statements from the '80s such as Lives in the Balance and World in Motion and weighs them against the personal, but he's all but forgotten how to write hooks. The title track is as personal as it gets; its breezy, cut-time beat and airy melody signals motion like the white lines clicking by on a highway. They underscore both time and life passing away, juxtaposed against the need to appreciate each moment. Browne accepts the blindness of the future as he does the helplessness of the past, though he doesn't accept aging. The next couple of tracks underscore this. There's the elegy to the '60s in "Off to Wonderland," a paean to the lost innocence of the heady years of idealism betrayed in both the Kennedys' and Martin Luther King's murders. The last line in this midtempo rock ballad is: "Didn't we believe that love would carry on/Wouldn't we receive enough/If we could just believe in one another/As much as we believed in John." It was wonderland, all right; these ideals were not hollow but they had no basis in American reality. The hardest rocking cut is "The Drums of War," which is Browne at his most didactic. It's as much a renewed call to arms as it is an indictment of the Bush years. It's a quickly passing moment, however, in that the very next track, "The Arms of Night," is a spiritual paean urging the listener to seek love in the right places. It's tender, confused, and authentic, but dull. "Where Were You?" has more teeth with its stuttering attempt at 21st century funk. Musically it serves more as a rock track with actual rhythm than it does funk. It's another socio-political indictment of alleged apathy in the post-millennial age. This album goes on, with no real aim other than telling us things that Browne's been thinking about these days (with the exception of the Latin-tinged "Goin' Down to Cuba," the best tune here; it's the only song with something resembling a hook). Browne seems to be speaking to his own generation; he's still trying to make sense of the world he wanted to live in and the one he actually does. Next time out, though, instead of worrying about his "enlightened" perspective, perhaps he should pay more attention to what made his earlier songs feel as if he actually owned one: craft. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
'Solo Acoustic, Vol. 2'
Release Date 2/19/2008
Tracks 19
Label Inside Recordings
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Jackson Browne gave listeners the first volume of his solo acoustic live performances in 2005. It was steeped in the gems from his rich catalog, presented with spoken word introductions to many of his best-known songs with a smattering of newer ones. The commentary got tiring in the CD format, but the music was impeccable and illustrated just how valuable he's been to American music as a songwriter. This second volume, while it does the same thing, is -- in a manner -- a mirror image of the first. The songs here are primarily from his later years. What's really interesting is that it doesn't matter. Browne's later songs communicate so directly that, presented in this manner, with only an acoustic guitar or a piano as accompaniment, we can find ourselves wandering around in reverie, or re-glimpsing the traces of emotion and time's passage as signposts to the way we live now. While there are a few "classic" tracks -- "Redneck Friend," "Something Fine," and "Somebody's Baby" (from the Fast Times at Ridgemont High soundtrack) -- most of the material here comes from records after Hold Out. There are three tunes from his last studio offering, the generally ignored and underrated Naked Ride Home, which stack up seamlessly with his '70s material. Those tunes, "The Night Inside Me," "Casino Nation," and "My Stunning Mystery Companion," grace the beginning, middle, and end of this offering. In other words, no matter where else Browne goes (and he goes all the way back to "Something Fine"), he returns to the present tense, where he now exists as a songwriter. The performances of these tracks, and those from albums such as Looking East, I'm Alive, World in Motion, and Lives in the Balance, offer listeners an opportunity to hear Browne at his most elemental. His songs began this way, with a lone instrumental backing, as a melody dictating itself to words or vice versa, and were hammered out or came in the flush of white-heat creativity, but they were shorn of any adornment -- just as they are here. The spoken introductions to several numbers are overly long and may have been fine for a sitting audience, but don't necessarily translate well to CD. That's a small complaint, however, as these 12 songs are quietly powerful, full of a particular craft and enigmatic gifts -- no matter when they were written or recorded. Browne has never lost it as a songwriter; this is the proof. If you went to the trouble to purchase the first volume, this is an essential counterpart. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
For the most part, The Naked Ride Home devotes itself to Jackson Browne's two favorite themes -- the slightly melancholy recollections of relationships either failed or failing which dominated albums like The Pretender and Late for the Sky, and socio-political observations of an increasingly chaotic world in the manner of Lives in the Balance and World in Motion. The craft of Browne's songwriting is still strong, and his performances are pin-sharp and passionate. It's clear he still takes the arts of songwriting and recording very seriously. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Jackson Browne begins his most Los Angeles-oriented album standing in the Pacific Ocean "Looking East" across the country and, as usual, doing so without much approval, but with a persistent hope. After reflecting on his youth in "The Barricades of Heaven," he compares the rich and poor in "Some Bridges" and takes time out to watch a little television in "Information Wars," before considering romance in "I'm the Cat," "Culver Moon," and "Baby How Long" and childhood in "Nino." He then decides he would like to be "Alive in the World," as opposed to inside his head or "behind some wall," and declares of that world, "It Is One." Thus, listeners are taken on another of Jackson Browne's tours, which manages to travel to outer and inner space without leaving the county of Los Angeles. After 24 years of record-making, he remains puzzled by the same personal and philosophical issues, and he approaches them in the same way, alternately hopeful and pessimistic, but more often than not ending up determined to persevere. He now uses fewer words, such that the songs sometimes seem no more than sketches, and he continues to set them to loping rock rhythms played against slabs of ringing guitar with traces of world music. Here, he co-credits eight of the ten songs to his backup musicians, yet the haunting, long-line melodies remain familiar from his earlier work. But then, Looking East is a highly referential work from an artist who started where most end and has been earnestly seeking the right direction ever since. Looking East finds him in his own backyard, still searching. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
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. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
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. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Usually among the most introspective of songwriters, Jackson Browne cast his gaze on the world outside on Lives in the Balance and did not like what he saw. Beginning with "For America," he lamented his previous indifference to social issues -- "I went on speaking of the future/While other people fought and bled" -- but immediately tried to make up for lost time. The album's context, of course, was five years of Ronald Reagan's presidency, with what the Left saw as an indifference to the plight of the poor at home and a dangerously aggressive policy against insurgent movements in the Central American countries of El Salvador and Nicaragua that they feared would lead to a Vietnam-like war. Without naming those places, Browne wrote and sang passionately against poverty in the songs "Soldier of Plenty" and "Lawless Avenues" and against war in "For America," "Lives in the Balance," and "Till I Go Down." Elsewhere, his more familiar themes of romantic ("In the Shape of a Heart") and philosophical ("Black and White") disillusionment also made appearances. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
