JACKSON BROWNE
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Standing in the Breach
Unlike peers such as David Crosby (faded and jaded) and Warren Zevon (dead, sadly), Jackson Browne has never lost his humanist spirit and/or deft singer-songwriter-y skill.
It's the late 1960s all over again during, The Birds of St Marks, with its near-perfect fusion of church-bell jangle and a yearning Browne vocal. JB then lets his Dylan influence run free with Which Side, a none-too-distant relative of the Bobfather's Gotta Serve Somebody, and runs a tear-stained eye over his life and times during the pensive The Long Way Around.
"The seeds of tragedy are there/In what we feel we have the right to bear," sighs Browne, his world-weary frustration packing more firepower than any gun. Compassionate, tuneful and very, very real, Standing in the Breach is as potent as anything Browne has released in the past 20 years.
★★★★
- JEFF APTER (of Fairfax Media)