The Eagles
Long Road Out Of Eden
(Eagles Recording Company, 2007)

We haven’t had an Eagles studio album since 1979. Jimmy Carter was president. I don’t even want to think about how much a gallon of gasoline cost, or how many music fans listened to eight-track tapes in their cars. Yet, here they are, not just with a new album, but with a two-CD collection of 20 brand new studio recordings.

There have been other bands from the ‘60s and ‘70s who stopped recording and only recently came back from the wilderness to make new albums. Steely Dan (Gaucho in 1980 was their last studio album) did it with Two Against Nature in 2000 and won a Grammy for album of the year in the process. The Who (It’s Hard was their last album in 1982) also did it last year with Endless Wire, yet they didn’t seem to engender much in the way of enthusiasm or, more importantly, sales for what was a great album. What all three of these albums have in common is that in each case the band has struck a balance between its ‘70s sound and moving forward without pandering to current musical trends. However, while Steely Dan and the Who often are championed by critics, the Eagles have had a tempestuous relationship with the press that has bordered on nasty from both sides.

The Eagles’ place as purveyors of laidback southern California cool from the start put them at diametrical odds with the largely New York-based rock-crit mafia. The geeky scribes disdained the band’s slick sound and perceived ideals. While, personally, I love Iggy Pop, the Ramones, and the Clash as much as the next guy, much of the Eagles’ anger with the shoddy treatment they received from the press was not unfounded. The Eagles defined the sound of American music in the ‘70s and it’s no fluke that Eagles: Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 is the best-selling album of all time with 41 million copies sold to date. These guys wrote timeless songs, harmonized wonderfully, and carefully crafted their albums to perfection. Also, for anyone who saw them live in their heyday, they could rock hard long before Joe Walsh officially joined the group.

Which brings us to their new release. It’s very much a tale of two albums, which isn’t to say it doesn’t all flow together nicely as one piece. In fact, given that the songs were written by many different songwriters over many years, the album is remarkably cohesive. Disc one largely reestablishes the band’s signature sound: harmonies like a cool breeze on a summer night, impeccable production that is not overtly slick, and an almost complete lack of studio tricks. Oddly enough, some of the tracks on disc one that inherently possess the creamiest harmonies, such as the alarmist environmental screed, “No More Walks in the Wood” and the excellent seven-minute plus “Waiting in the Weeds”, recall the sweet singing of Poco, of which Eagles bassist Tim Schmit was a member. “Fast Company” has a kinship to “Life in the Fast Lane” lyrically and to a lesser extent musically, while “Do Something” nicely recalls the heartfelt romance of “Best of My Love.” “Busy Being Fabulous”, co-written by Don Henley and Glenn Frey, shows just how good a lyricist Henley is and spotlights that urgency of his songs and the relevance they still have.

While “No More Walks in the Woods” and especially “Busy Being Fabulous” and “Waiting in the Weeds” are great songs, the group really moves their sound forward on disc two with tracks that appear to have been very organically constructed and employ almost no cheap electronic production gloss. This is still very much a guitar band, although on the title track which opens disc one, Don Felder’s gauzy, yet pungent and singular guitar style is sorely missing. The song has some of the feel of Crosby, Stills and Nash’s “Long Time Gone” and again the lyrics are as good as it gets. A song with another great lyric is “Frail Grasp on the Big Picture,” which musically has a chunky, bold funk edge. “Last Good Time in Town,” oddly a Joe Walsh song, has a rhythmic Steely Dan feel, while “I Love To Watch Women Dance” faintly echoes the simplicity of a vintage song from the Band. “Center of the Universe”, like “Waiting in the Weeds”, eloquently evokes loss both musically and lyrically.

The group’s LA perspective has actually given them a unique view of America, as there are few places in the US where loss and unnecessary change evolve as quickly and carelessly. It’s this wistful picture of a vanishing world that makes these songs so bittersweet and memorable.

As good as this two-CD set is, it’s odd that the very politically and socially-minded Eagles would choose Wal-Mart to exclusively sell their album. Money certainly has something to do with it, as Glenn Frey told Billboard: “Wal-Mart pays us a very lucrative royalty; a royalty that no record company could come close to matching.” In Henley’s interview with Billboard, he responded at length about this seemingly odd relationship. One quote of his from the piece perhaps best encapsulates how the group has justified this decision, “Wal-Mart is not a prefect company, but as I have said many times in print, they can’t possibly be any worse than a major record label.” In actual fact, the group’s album will ironically be marketed and distributed by Universal Record’s Nashville office outside of North America.

Regardless of what the group says, there will be howls of hypocrisy from many and not just the group’s usual detractors. Another point to note is that given the world of digitally delivered music, this may be the last time a major group from the ‘60s or ‘70s will release an actual physical double studio release. It’s been a long road indeed.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]