GenQ - For the not so straight individual

Eagles fans have been waiting a while for ‘Long Road out of Eden’ - 28 years in fact. There have been reunion tours, live DVD’s, and greatest hits albums, (of which theirs is the best-selling album in recorded music history in the United States), but it’s been almost three decades since the Eagles last released a studio album. The 20 new tracks spread over two discs have been a long time coming, but what I found remarkable is that the album sounds like it could have been made 28 years ago, if you ignore the blatant references to the Iraq war that is. The harmonies are as tight as ever, lead vocals as passionate, and the hooks as memorable, but the country rock sounds dated, and half of the tracks sound like B-sides on 70’s or 80s records.

The familiar Eagles themes are present and accounted for. American greed and the mirage of celebrity and shiny things take their place beside ballads of lost love and faded dreams, but the guys also have something else on their minds – the war in Iraq. The epic ten minute long title track is a scathing attack on American imperialism, (“…bloated with entitlement; loaded on propaganda�) featuring an Arabian intro that almost makes you feel the desert wing blowing around you, a scorching guitar solo and a building chorus. It doesn’t have the enigmatic quality that made ‘Hotel California’ a classic, but it gets about three quarters of the way there. They follow it up with the instrumental, ‘I Dreamed There Was No War’, just in case you didn’t get the message, but the hopeful guitar melody reminds me of the nostalgic photo montages of people who have passed that they play during Hollywood award shows. Bluesy track, ‘Frail Grasp on the Big Picture’, and ‘Business as Usual’ are indictments on the apathy and materialism of American society, and the country rock of ‘Busy Being Fabulous’ and the Prince inspired bass and falsetto on ‘Fast Company’ warn about the perils of fame and wealth.

Protest songs and tales of caution aside, it’s the ballads that provide most of the highlights. The comforting, ‘You Are Not Alone’ is a gorgeous track with a folksy feel and a marching beat that echoes the theme of the song, and the stripped down torch song, ‘Waiting in the Weeds’ has a fantastic hook you can’t shake and you won’t want to. Some of the ballads backfire though. ‘What Do I Do with My Heart’ and ‘I Don't Want to Hear Any More’, try their hardest but end up sounding like songs from the soundtrack to a Kevin Costner movie from the early 1990s... not that I'd know what that sounded like. Lead single, 'How Long', is a stand-out and by far the most radio-friendly of both discs, (country radio will eat it up), and boasts one of the best hooks on the album. ‘Somebody’ provides a highlight, with its harder edge and menacing feeling, and the spare, ‘No More Walks in the Wood’, showcases their stunning harmonies to their fullest.

I’m not sure why they released it as a double CD, because only half of the songs are keepers. They are at times delightfully poetic, (“…answering the calling of the tides eternal tune�), and at others horribly cliché, (“I would never make you cry, I would never make you blue�), and whispered backing vocals and Kenny G style saxophone solos date a few of the tracks... to like 1980, and not in a good Pat Benatar ‘Love is a Battlefield’ kind of way. Long-time fans have been savouring the return of the Eagles, buying over 3 million copies of ‘Long Road out of Eden’ in the first week of its release, but I doubt it’ll win them any new fans… at least not in my generation.