Jackson Browne - Running on Empty

“I have to admit that what I like best is writing a song that truly says how I feel, that I believe in, and that is even able to explain the world to me better than I understand it myself.” Sometimes a single sentence sums up an entire existence. Other times it does much more: it makes the person who said it instantly recognizable. Author, political activist, singer, performer. So intimate it hurts, so committed it makes you think. Nico, Eagles, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Rush, Warren Zevon. And the list certainly doesn't end there. Everyone has a reason to be grateful to Clyde “Jackson” Browne. The term most commonly attached to him is “West Coast,” but Browne has played so many roles and been so pivotal to a certain musical trajectory from the Sixties onward that only by tracing who has covered his songs, who has played with him, who has produced him, and what awards he's received can you get a true sense of his impact.

It's not just that his lyrics reach the human soul: they probe it and return it to us aching. As if Browne knew exactly what each of us has suffered. Lyrics steeped in poetry and in that bitter sweetness peculiar to someone who has looked far ahead. Lyrics that became a touchstone for the countless dreamers (and disillusioned souls) left adrift by the return to reality after the flower-power dream. All the changes, awakenings, revolutions, and the growing awareness of the Sixties, along with his own personal “tragedies,” helped “create” Jackson Browne the musician. He simply rose above them through his music, always melancholic and fatalistic, intimate yet almost epic in its drive to tell small-yet-great individual and collective sagas.

Clyde “Jackson” was born in Germany in 1948, where his father, a journalist for the US Army Newspaper, was temporarily stationed. A few years later, the Browne family moved to California, to the house his grandfather had built in Los Angeles in the Twenties. It was his father, a dixieland jazz enthusiast, who introduced him to music, as well as to the kind of reading that would go a long way toward shaping a uniquely expressive voice, always poised between poetry, irony and drama. Young Jackson first picked up a trumpet, then grew fond of the banjo, which he just as quickly abandoned, before finally settling on the guitar for good.

His high school years in Orange County brought him into contact with some of the musicians who would accompany him for years to come, deepening his passion for the folk tradition. His first notable compositions replaced his adolescent efforts, and his gift as a songwriter began to show through. Jackson was still just sixteen when he wrote an embryonic version of “These Days,” which would later appear on For Everyman, and he began performing at a cult venue like the Paradox, then a breeding ground for some of the best talents to come, from Tim Buckley to The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

It was the folk explosion. The influence of Greenwich Village and of Bob Dylan — in Jackson's view, and not only his, one of the most influential thinkers and writers of the century — had by then taken over completely. After a very brief stint with The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (who would later include many of his songs in their albums and live sets) and with Gentle Soul, Jackson signed with Nina Music. Perpetually on the move, he followed his instincts all the way to the “heart of the dream,” which took him to New York, where he struck up friendships with the elite of the local folk scene. Some of his most epic compositions were recorded in those very days, to be pitched to the label's artists. As often happens — see Springsteen and his famous “Demo Tapes” — they eventually saw the light of day. Rough and loosely structured as they are, the “Nina Demos” already reveal a potential ready to blossom.

In 1968, he returned to California. This time his circle of friends is nothing short of astonishing: J.D. Souther, David Crosby, Glenn Frey, to name just a few. And yet another venue, the Troubadour, where Browne opened shows for Linda Ronstadt. By now he was no longer a green teenager writing songs, but a prolific, well-regarded songwriter whose material was being recorded by giants like The Byrds and Eagles (“Take It Easy,” co-written with Glenn Frey, became the California band's first hit). Yet he still had no album of his own to his name. It was then that myth and reality merged perfectly, leading David Geffen to sign him to the newly founded Asylum.

The Californian singer-songwriter already had Jackson Browne ready in the second half of 1971, but David Geffen wisely bided his time. The strategy paid off. The decision not to release the album in competition with the best releases of the season (Christmas 1971) was rewarded with 23 weeks in the Top 100 Pop Albums. Surprisingly, Browne left out all the songs from his 1967 demo and still managed to deliver, right out of the gate, at least three tracks that instantly became classics. “Jamaica Say You Will” is a gorgeous piano-led ballad backed by David Crosby's vocals; what stands out is the expressive and compositional maturity, the effective simplicity of the arrangements, and a lyric that in a single line (“Help me find a way to fill these empty hours, say you will come again tomorrow”) already reveals all the poetry, the whole body of work that would come to define Browne. “Doctor My Eyes” and “Rock Me On The Water,” meanwhile, were the two singles drawn from the album, and both reached decent positions on the American charts. The first is a rock number driven by piano and slide guitar, backing Browne's soulful voice, while the second has an almost r'n'b feel: both would go on to become live staples.

But once again, what truly strikes is the lyrics, which leave nothing to chance, that depth of insight that seems to take on a different shade each time. Jackson became the opening act on Joni Mitchell's tour. Rolling Stone started talking about him again.

In October 1973 came the definitive confirmation with For Everyman. Browne is only twenty-four, yet he already shows a veteran's maturity and a kind of quiet confidence in his own abilities. All the pieces of the puzzle start falling into place. The songwriting grows even more refined, more introspective, leaving behind a flavor that lingers unmistakably with the listener. It's folk, the West Coast's new obsession, that you find woven through the record's grooves. The album swerves now toward electric country, as in “Ready Or Not,” a track steeped in irony recounting his first meeting with his future wife, now toward southern-tinged soul (“These Days”), now toward ballads with a classic folk-rock flavor, where his extraordinary ability to use words to lay bare the soul widens the horizon toward humanity in general, toward a more universal way of thinking. The same goes for the stately title track: “For Everyman” is a ballad that lays down the coordinates for much of the singer-songwriter music to come; this time it's not the piano but the guitar that creates a haunting sound, where intimacy and social consciousness merge once again.

An album that comes close to a masterpiece (one that would only be postponed slightly), where his fellow travelers also play a crucial role. Chief among them David Lindley, a true musical genius who puts his superlative technique — on guitar and beyond — at the service of his friend's delicate melodies. “Redneck Friend,” a rock'n'roll number with echoes of the Fifties and a hand extended toward difference, features Elton John on boogie piano, still nowhere near a shadow of himself, and his friend Glenn Frey on harmony vocals. The path is now set.

And so here it is: the masterpiece of a career. Late For The Sky brings every insight of his earlier work to full fruition. Eight timeless tracks, lyrics that push past the limits of what a rock song should be able to bear. And a cover alone worth the price of admission. Backed by an outstanding band (David Lindley on guitar, Doug Haywood on bass, Larry Zack on percussion and Jai Winding on organ), Browne crafts a record played and arranged with flawless precision, helped along by Lindley's work: on an instrument that in rock is usually the most narcissistic of all, he prefers to indulge in exquisite sonic embroidery and inlay rather than give in to empty showmanship.

The opening of the title track is one of the most moving ever recorded, with a haunting organ and Browne's voice clear and melancholic, followed by those few piano notes in which all of human loneliness seems to coalesce, and, in contrast, an inexplicable need for love. Finally, Lindley's solo, capable of melting the heart even of the beasts of hell. “Fountain Of Sorrow” doesn't break from the elegiac tone of the opening track, and although the pace is (gently) more driving, Browne's melancholy and pure singing remain, like some last prophet of feeling. On “Further On,” Lindley reaches the peak of his guitar style: his instrument doesn't play, it literally weeps, patiently carving away at the desperate melody Jackson intones on piano.

The album's midpoint arrives with the elegant “The Late Show,” a choral song of almost mystical, ecumenical depth, with Lindley's guitar triumphant in the finale. “The Road And The Sky” is a carefree ride down the open road, a noble rock'n'roll number, with the guitars turning rougher while the piano's earlier composure gives way to a raucous boogie. Then it's back to sorrow — grief, really — with “For A Dancer,” a song for a departed friend, where the mournful mood is beautifully conveyed by the violin, again played by Lindley. With “Walking Slow,” the troubles of the previous track are exorcised through dance: the bass nods to funk, the handclaps drive the rhythm, and Lindley's pyrotechnic guitar solo seals the track.

It all closes with the anti-nuclear manifesto of “Before The Deluge”: “Some of them were dreamers/ Some of them were fools,” the opening line is an epitaph on the grave of hope, the total collapse of the hippie illusions Browne had once championed, and at the same time an extreme warning to a humanity teetering on the edge of catastrophe. A requiem for organ and viola describing the desolation of a world that closes on a redemptive gospel note: even at the bottom of the abyss, there is still hope.

With this album Jackson Browne establishes himself as a chronicler of everyday life, of society, of the collective experience; his sorrows and his melancholy are, after all, shared by everyone, bound together by the same joys and the same miseries. Memories pile up over losses, “where already a trace of suffering showed in your eyes,” and suddenly, right there “where the sky and the road collide,” that sense of emotional stasis is offset by the urge to move forward, to leave yesterday behind and look at what's happening around with different eyes. “Don't think it won't happen just because it hasn't happened yet,” he warns on “The Road And The Sky.” And it's the ballad in all its forms — now through Lindley's guitars and violin, now through Jackson and Winding's piano and vocal harmonies that drift into the purest soul — that provides the backdrop for one of the warmest voices white music has ever known. Because the instrument that shines brightest here is Browne's extraordinary voice itself. Cinema didn't let the opportunity slip by, and Scorsese used the title track in his finest film, “Taxi Driver.”

It doesn't take long for Browne's next record to arrive, with the now "usual suspects" pitching in without holding back, alongside a fresh crop of guests including Lowell George and Albert Lee. But above all, in the producer's chair is Jon Landau, fresh off co-producing Springsteen's "Born To Run," who is writing a fundamental chapter in rock history. And indeed The Pretender sounds much more rock, even if it perhaps bends a little to mainstream logic. The arrangements wink at the charts, but from the very first chords of "The Fuse" it's clear the quality remains intact. The emotional impact Jackson pours into his music is made devastating by his wife's suicide, a tragic event that leaves its mark on the record, even though some of the songs had been written earlier. Still, it's impossible to listen to the opening verse of "Here Come Those Tears Again" — piano and guitar once again accompanying a focused, deep vocal — without hearing the pain of loss, of fighting demons and anguish, and right when "just when I was going to make it through another night without missing you," finding yourself hearing those footsteps echo in the hallway. The same goes for the closing verse of "Your Bright Baby Blues" — a track with a faintly country flavor, enriched by the piano of "The Professor" Roy Bittan, lent by his friend Bruce — when the veiled hint of something to ease the suffering is reduced to a prayer, a plea for help, because sometimes it's too hard to face alone. And how hard is it to find the words to explain to a child that his mother is gone? In "The Only Child," Browne comes to terms with this no less than he seeks reconciliation with a distant (or estranged?) father in the lengthy "Daddy's Tune."

Then poetry takes over the final two tracks. In "Sleep's Dark And Silent Gate" remorse seems to chase itself around the soul, before giving way to the dreams of "The Pretender," a magnificent ballad, dressed in the vocal harmonies of Crosby and Nash, which opens the door to hope for a new life, even though the "pretender" remains locked in perpetual conflict: on one side the desire for love, on the other the disillusionment of changes expected but never arrived. Browne's poetic voice, in short, is still at its peak.

Escape from pain takes the shape of the road, the tour, being swept into a vortex that leaves no room for thought except in the odd spare moment between shows, in backstage areas, dressing rooms and hotel rooms. And it's precisely in this "infertile" environment that his fifth album is born, the one that will earn him a place among rock's elite.

Running On Empty is the "on the road" album par excellence. Every track is written and recorded during the tour, yet this isn't a live album. It's the life of a musician unfolding across dates, halls, tour buses, stages. Original songs blend seamlessly with covers by other writers. A "run on empty" that also works as an effective metaphor for the great illusion of the '60s and '70s, for the end of a collective utopia.

The opening is a scorcher: "Running On Empty" is an instant classic from the very first verse... “Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels/ Looking back at the years gone by like so many summer fields/ In ‘65 I was seventeen and running up one-o-one/ I don’t know where I’m running now/ I’m just running on…”. A far more guitar-driven, taut kind of rock introduces music that heals, that treats the wounds of the past and leads nowhere except everywhere... on the road. "The Road," a track that's typically folk in structure, written by Danny O'Keefe, has never sounded more fitting: it's a cynical, disillusioned portrait of fans, but also of those standing in front of a microphone; it leaves nothing to the imaginative romanticism of the tour as a moment of apotheosis and fusion between an audience and its idols. And between a passing "Rosie" and a driving blues like "Cocaine," all you can do is wait for the show to start... and to end. The masterpiece here is called "The Load-Out/Stay": everything gets packed up for the next city, and everyone is caught up in their own thoughts, in that feeling of emptiness that won't end until they step onto a new stage, because "the time that seems shortest is the time we spend playing." And so you might even end up begging people to stay for one more song...

And here, having barely put a foot wrong, the first chapter of Jackson Browne's career comes to a close. Five albums, five bullseyes. The 1970s. Accompanied by the social, political and civic commitment that follows the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster and culminates in the M.U.S.E. concerts of September 1979, alongside the leading figures of American musical activism (plus the odd, politically speaking, "strange" outsider like Springsteen).

Then the '80s begin. And Jackson gets tangled up in the sounds that define that era.

Hold Out is given a treatment built on keyboards and synthesizers that makes some of the already less-than-brilliant songs sound overproduced and heavy-handed. Even the vocals feel completely out of place, with mannered falsettos that sound forced, chasing a modernity that's mostly unnecessary. The experiments of the first half — "Disco Apocalypse," an almost dance-oriented episode that's decidedly unsuccessful, and "That Girl Could Sing, Boulevard," a soul track that would find better fortune in live arrangements over time — spin their wheels. Despite the presence of trusty David Lindley and Bob Glaub, the sound, weighed down by keyboards, feels cold and jarring compared to earlier work, with vocal reverbs and solos that add nothing of interest.

The second half, from the tribute to Lowell George, "Of Missing Person," with lyrics steeped in soul that reveal all the pain of losing a friend, to the epic closer "Hold On Hold Out," lifts the album's fortunes considerably, at times recalling the poetry of the golden years.

While beginning the process that will shift his focus toward the political on later albums, Jackson never loses sight of the personal dimension, singing even "for the countless souls beaten by their goals" and returning to musical ground more suited to him. "Call It A Loan," co-written with Lindley, almost sounds like an outtake from Late For The Sky.

After a near disco-music single ("Somebody's Baby") and a transitional, frankly rather mediocre album like Lawyers In Love — whose only real merit is sharpening the focus of its political concerns (the title track, "Say It Isn't True") and lightening the drama of older compositions ("Tender Is The Night" above all) with a touch of (perhaps too much) humor — 1986 brings Lives In The Balance. Browne sets his sights on Reagan's second-term America, scrutinized from every angle, amid new poverty and wars looming or just ended, inequality and international misdeeds (U.S. foreign policy in Latin America).

An album with modern sonics, though this time better balanced, which Jackson opens with "For America," a personal mea culpa, crystal clear and sincere. "As if I really didn't understand that I was just another part of their plan I went off looking for the promise, believing in the Motherland" and, digging even deeper: "And from the comfort of a dreamer's bed and the safety of my own head, I went on speaking of the future while other people fought and bled." Sampled sounds, vocoder and synthesizers provide just the right musical backing this time.

Then the indictment widens, giving rise to tracks like "Soldier Of Plenty," with its warning not to meddle with the world (of others?), or "Lives In The Balance," caught between ethno-folk and drum machine, where the attack on U.S. foreign policy is sharp and uncompromising: "A government that lies to its own people and a nation dragged into war, where there are shadows on the faces of those who send the weapons for wars fought in places where there are interests." And you can't close your eyes to the lies we keep being told, as "Till I Go Down," with its distinctly reggae groove, suggests.

But it wouldn't be a Jackson Browne album without at least one sentimental ballad like "In The Shape Of The Heart": a clear-eyed, thoughtful look at his relationship with actress Daryl Hannah, which had also landed under the media spotlight. Whenever he tackles the musical form that suits him best, whether painted in brushstrokes balanced between country and folk or bolstered by more modern sounds, Browne always manages to leave his mark.

The heights of the '70s remain distant, but Lives In The Balance shows a Browne still in fine form, and the future musical direction of his career finds its roots right here, in this LP.

Doubling down on the anti-Reagan push, 1989 brought World In Motion, an album even more politicized than its predecessor, both in its original songs and in its choice of covers. However, unlike the previous record, the initial purpose tends to scatter across the tracklist. The songs are still populated by the homeless, the poor and the dispossessed, and the lyrics remain sharp, intelligent and profound, but the tone is less biting and often grows repetitive. Worth remembering is the title track, which preaches of a "sun that is setting on the USA to rise on a different world where, one way or another, hunger, greed and hatred will be uprooted."

Musically, it's a step backward: unlike the previous record, the mix of keyboards and sampled sounds comes across as heavy and out of focus. So even songs with real melodic potential, like "Anything Can Happen" or "Enough Of The Night", drown in muddled, overbearing arrangements, and even the new reggae experiment "When The Stone Begins To Turn" fails to convince. The choice to cover Little Steven's "I'm A Patriot" is a good one, but it's telling that it ends up being the best track on the record.

Confirming that the creative well had run a bit dry and a pause for reflection was needed, four years of silence followed. Browne, however, kept busy, touring in support of the album and collaborating as a writer and performer with the Chieftains and Jennifer Warnes on the compilation "For Our Children".

The next step should be introduced by mentioning what Dave Marsh called "one of the most beautiful love songs Jackson - or any other songwriter - has ever recorded." "Sky Blue And Black" is one of the compositional peaks of the Californian songwriter, an aching ballad marked by the pain of the end of his relationship with Daryl Hannah. "I would have fought the world for you if I'd only thought that's what you wanted, or let go of what was true and what was not, if I'd known that's what you wanted from me" would already be enough. But how can we not quote the simplicity, and at the same time the immense complexity, of the final verse? "You're the hidden price and the thing that's lost in everything I do, and yes, I'll keep looking for you in the shadows and in the light and in all the faces on the street, because that's what love is, sky blue and black."

Already in November 1990, the preview of the single "I'm Alive" at the benefit for the Christic Institute (where Browne's path once again crossed with those of his friend Springsteen and Bonnie Raitt) had given reason for optimism. But it's the entire tracklist of I'm Alive that brings the songwriter back into contact with his audience, proving that the title phrase is a sincere statement of intent. “Step out in the morning sun/ Through the flood of tears/ I want to greet the dawn/ Cast away these fears/ Forget about the things we could have done” he sings in "Too Many Angels", with the clear intention of leaving behind only memories, no longer regrets, while "All Good Things" hints at further references to his private life. This time the arrangements are focused and never intrusive. From the pop rock of the title track to the recovery of typically '70s sounds for the ballads, everything may sound somewhat familiar, but it's enjoyable all the same.

Jackson then set out on tour with his seasoned band, promoting the album for two years.

His eleventh full-length, Looking East, is a further step back toward past glories. Many consider it, both lyrically and musically, one of his most accomplished and complex works. All the songs are co-written with members of the band, a sign of extreme cohesion. Every musical trope of his repertoire gets touched on, from the playful pop stride of "I'm A Cat" to the classic epic sweep of "The Barricades Of Heaven", with a tender memory of his early days, when places like "...the Paradox, the Bear and the Rouge et Noir" were everything, along with the streets of the City of Angels, all the way to the driving beat of "Culver Moon" and "Looking East", where the guitars once again take center stage, and where references to Los Angeles grow ever more frequent.

From this album onward, Browne's approach to songwriting, both in the studio and in his live shows, would not undergo substantial changes, helped along by the band's constant musical contribution to the songwriting.

Before the next album saw the light of day, fans had to wait six long years, during which Browne was anything but inactive. Indeed, his appearances were countless, between benefit concerts and guest appearances, backed by DVD releases (Going Home, an absolute must-have) and greatest-hits compilations marking career and personal anniversaries (on October 9, 1998 he celebrated his 50th birthday). His interest in humanity, both on a personal and a political level, earned him the John Steinbeck Award in 2002.

The following year saw the release of The Naked Ride Home (2002). Once again, most of the material was written together with the band that had been backing him for a lifetime by this point. The songs follow the classic Browne style, reflective and sincere, with a sound not far removed from his most recent predecessors, embracing a power-pop with fairly robust arrangements.

The opening is electrifying, with the title track and "The Night Inside Me". A new encounter to make up for having failed "to hear the heart that was beating alone", and perhaps it's exactly what's needed to drive away the demons that have haunted the songwriter's mind ("with every doubt and every sorrow that was in my way/ Tearing around inside my head like it was there to stay").

Attention shifts once again to social and political matters with "Casino Nation", which warns of everyday alienation and the distance between people, too many of them caught up in a "world of convenience" that forces us to live and walk "where the eyes never meet" ("Walking Town"). Also worth noting are a gentle tribute to director Sergio Leone (the eponymous track) and a reflection on the eternal doubt that haunts every person, a vision in which what might have happened collides with reality ("About My Imagination"), making room for the wonder of having someone (or something?) nearby who makes life more bearable ("My Stunning Mystery Companion").

By now, the time between one Browne album and the next is marked by awards, tours and various releases. In February 2004, Bruce Springsteen inducted him into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame with an absolutely extraordinary speech. To mark the occasion, The Very Best Of Jackson Browne was released the following day. It is the broadest and most complete collection of the Californian songwriter's work. And amid tours and awards (in 2007 Browne was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and in 2008 he received the Harry Chapin Memorial Humanitarian Award), two live albums came out nearly twenty years after Running On Empty: Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, containing acoustic tracks likely recorded during the same run of concerts. Two essential records for understanding Browne live, with interaction with the audience as an unmissable goal of every one of his shows. The first volume is also an opportunity to hear the previously unreleased "The Birds Of St. Marks", written when he was very young and never officially released.

In September 2008, after a six-year hiatus, Browne finally released an album of new material, Time The Conqueror (2008), once again backed by his now well-established band.

Critical response was fairly lukewarm: the songs, which follow in the footsteps of the previous record, mark time, revealing a songwriter who clearly still has something to say but who perhaps can no longer find the most fitting way to express it. The music, always true to itself, this time seems to serve as a backdrop that isn't quite as significant, or perhaps we simply need to listen to it and absorb it slowly, as has sometimes been the case with his work. The fact remains that the album adds nothing new to the Californian songwriter's usual themes (he appears on the cover with an unusual little white beard), ranging between introspective ballads (the title track) and fresh political commentary ("The Drums Of War", "Where Were You", "Going Down To Cuba"), this time rather on-the-nose, but which confirm a tireless commitment in an age of disillusionment (as Randy Newman would quip, in a song from roughly the same period, "Nobody cares about anything anymore, except Jackson Browne").

The double live CD Love Is Strange (2010) instead documents an acoustic tour that, on its Spanish leg, took in Madrid, Oviedo, Bilbao, Zaragoza, Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca. Joining him on this new adventure were longtime guitarist David Lindley, Tino di Geraldo and a string of exceptional guests who further elevate the performances: Carlos Nunez, Javier Mas, Kiko Veneno and Luz Casal.

If, as Bruce Springsteen said in his famous speech at the R'n'r Hall of Fame, "our job here on earth, the way we regain our divinity, our sacredness…. is by reconstructing love and creating love out of the broken pieces that we've been given", then Jackson Browne is not only among those who have honored this task in the best way imaginable, but also among those who have guided an entire generation along this path. Every time love, death, pain, or any feeling any of us carries inside has been on the verge of exploding into a thousand pieces, Browne has always found a way to make it "slightly more bearable".

2021 brought Downhill From Everywhere, which however doesn't add much of significance to his long career.

The opener "Still Looking For Something" makes us hope for the best from the nine songs that follow, as Browne himself puts it, "I'm still looking for something", and the direction taken does seem to be the right one, with no great flashes of novelty but faithful to his socially engaged past and in perfect West Coast style. "My Cleveland Heart", with a riff and chorus that recall early John Mellencamp, tells of a rocker who imagines replacing his own heart with an artificial one, so as to overcome the pains and metaphorical frailties to which that essential muscle is subjected. Travelling in the same lane, with a more accelerated beat, is "Until Justice Is Real".

The ballad "Minutes To Downtown" is a love song for a new partner, while the piano-led "A Human Touch" is written and performed with Leslie Mendelson (a young Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter) for the documentary 5B, the story of the everyday heroes, nurses and caregivers who took extraordinary action to comfort, protect and care for patients in the first AIDS ward, opened in 1983 at San Francisco General Hospital.

The opening riff of "Love Is Love" sounds as if it came straight out of the sessions for his I'm Alive (1997), but it actually comes from "Let The Rhythm Lead: Haiti Song Summit Vol. 1" (2020), a charity project that, besides Browne, also features Paul Beaubrun, Habib Koité, Jenny Lewis, Raúl Rodríguez, Jonathan Russell and Jonathan Wilson, playing alongside members of the Haitian roots group "Lakou Mizik". A message of hope in the face of unspeakable obstacles, which retains the original Caribbean flavor and part of its lyrics in French.

Continuing with the musical cross-pollination, when Browne's voice sings in Spanish it's hard not to be put off by the caricature-like accent. In the chorus of "The Dreamer", Jackson asks in Castilian where the dreams born of faith and illusion go, and in telling the story of yet another immigrant who, having crossed the notorious Mexican border, is searching for a better life, everything sounds a bit out of place, clunky and thrown together as best it could be. Much more focused is the original 2017 version of the song recorded with Los Cenzontles (a group that promotes Mexican music), in which the "Linda Paloma"-style arrangements of many years earlier resurface. The other foray into Spanish comes in the closing chorus of "Song For Barcelona", a tribute to the Catalan city.

The title track, on the other hand, is an indictment of our behavior and of how carelessly we are polluting all of our oceans, a rock song dominated by a call-and-response lyric in Dylan style. "A Little Soon To Say" describes a moment of self-introspection on our lives and the hope that the world will, in the future, be a better place, within a ballad that rides on an arpeggiated guitar riff over which the lyrics rest gently.

Once again, albeit more thanks to an image that frames his songs than to the songs themselves, the message Browne wants to convey to us hits home. All the more welcome, then, are those like him who keep on trying.

Contributions by Salvatore Setola ("Late For The Sky"), Lorenzo Donvito ("Downhill From Everywhere")

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