Military Music - Military Times

Eagles’ ‘Road,’ smooth as ever

When Eagles records were omnipresent in the ’70s, it was easy to shrug off their painstaking craftsmanship and perfect harmonies as overly polished studio exercises in hookmanship. But unfamiliarity breeds content — 28 years after their last studio album, what might have sounded bland now sounds refreshing, and the anger, wit and bitterness that were always concealed beneath the gloss, now tempered with a philosophical detachment of sorts, are more welcome than ever. Two extraordinary extended cuts highlight the double album (available only at the Wal-Mart empire and http://www.eaglesband.com). “Waiting in the Weeds”, by Don Henley and co-producer Steuart Smith, is an elegant and eloquent bittersweet (accent on the bitter) elegy to a lost love. Henley and Glenn Frey’s 10-minute title track is the album’s “Hotel California”-style epic, decrying bloated privilege and empire-building around atmospheric desert-music motifs and a scorching guitar solo. Elsewhere there are verbal assaults on posers, the media, the religion/patriotism link and, just for fun, romantic folly. And it would not be an Eagles album without being maddeningly uneven. But if this is the band’s last testament (and Frey’s “It’s Your World Now”, ostensibly aimed at his children, can be read as a more general handoff), it’s a grand one.

• Download: “Weeds,” “Long Road,” gorgeous opener “No More Walks in the Wood,” “Center of the Universe”

• Consider: “Somebody,” Bee Gees-ish “Fast Company,” “Frail Grasp on the Big Picture”

• Skip: “Last Good Time in Town,” “Guilty of the Crime”