Eagles - Long Road Out of Eden
It is now three months to the day since the release of the Eagles’ Long Road Out of Eden, and I have to say I am seriously impressed.
A strange musical trend lately seems to be having really old band members get back together and start recording like the last few decades of silence never happened. A lot of these bands have found that they don’t have much of an audience anymore, or at least not an audience that is interested in hearing new music from old chart-toppers who are way too old to be in rock bands. But the Eagles have pulled off a pretty impressive comeback.
Long Road Out of Eden has gone platinum in a handful of countries (Sweden caught me a little by surprise) and is currently closing in on three million stateside sales. This, from a band that hasn’t released a truly new studio album in almost thirty years. A band whose members average about the age of ninety-seven. That’s not something I expected to see.
And apparently, all those years of not having Eagles music to write left them with a lot of unused creativity, because the band felt prompted to release a double album with more than ninety minutes of music. And what’s shocked me the most is that it actually sounds like the Eagles. The years have not challenged the musicians’ vision of what Eagles music is. They picked up just about where they left off.
The album is leisurely paced, with the signature sounds of the Eagles’ particular brand of folksy country-rock. The first track is a stunning two-minute a capella piece that, while a bit adventurous, opens the album well with a slow melodic hook and careful harmony. This leads into the first single, “How Long,” which, though not on par with their hits of the past, builds confidence in their ability to revisit those glories.
Probably just due to its being a double album, it begins to drag a bit near the end of the first disc and fails to pick up the pace over the course of the second. Highlights along the way are the melancholy, emotional “Waiting in the Weeds” and the slightly more agressive, more And though no individual track reaches the heights of “Desperado” or “Hotel California,” Long Road Out of Eden passes itself off as just worthy enough to stand as another addition to the already impressive Eagles library.
I, for one, look forward to their next release.