Jackson Browne: Time The Conqueror

By: Dennis Cook

Pitched closer to the pleasant slickness of The Pretender (1976) rather than the over-production of the past couple decades, Jackson Browne‘s 13th album, his first new material in six years, finds him in solid ruminatin’ form. It’s a lightweight gravitas but weighty nonetheless, large and deeply felt concepts ensnared with heart strings and one of the most natural voices to ever hit rock. Time The Conqueror (released September 23 on Inside Recordings) is exceedingly comfortable music with a backward looking eye, as befits the title. Browne is taking score of a long, often roughly lived life, both his own and those around him. A baby boomer of the first order, his catalog straddles ’60s idealism, ’70s disillusion and ’80s bewilderment, and as such, this feels more timely than he has in a spell.

However, there’s some genuine flops amongst these ten new tracks. The six-minute-plus “The Drums of War” is a Pete Seeger wannabe with the dated musical feel of ’80s Bruce Cockburn. It is exactly the kind of thing hardcore conservatives point to when they want to illustrate the Left’s dewy-eyed, somewhat naïve brow furrowing. I’m as against war as anybody you’ll ever meet but there’s never anything pleasant about being scolded, even in song. And I doubt Dick Cheney is throwing on Jackson’s latest, so once again it’s preaching to a thoroughly converted choir. It’s an unfortunate thread that surfaces again on “Far From The Arms Of Hunger” and it makes me wonder if all the psychoanalysis, self-help books and focus on the individual in Browne’s generation doesn’t create an appetite for drama and reinforce a victim-centered worldview. It’s not like the $20 bucks someone spends on this album couldn’t better help starving people somewhere, not to mention the $60-100 or more one spends to see Browne live. There’s some value in singing “If I Had A Hammer” but it matters more what you build with it.

Far more successful is “Where Were You,” a close to ten-minute poetic winging that poses a long string of rhetoricals against some of the toughest, most sinewy musical backing he’s mustered in years. The gentle Cubanismo of “Going Down To Cuba” fits with his long running Latin fascination, and if a slight effort it’s no less charming. The same sentimental groove prevails on “Giving That Heaven Away,” which one can too easily imagine well-heeled boomers swaying to over expensive Chablis, but it rolls so easily it’s tough to totally dismiss. One wishes Browne weren’t so comfortable being comfortable. There are no “Red Neck Friend” or “The Road and the Sky” moments here. There is a coolly observed strip club ballad, “Live Nude Cabaret,” that works in Moses’ demand to “let my people go” in a way that’s both amusing and effectively disturbing. And “Just Say Yeah” could be an outtake from the aforementioned Pretender; chock full of Browne’s gift for interpersonal observation and flowing melody.

Let’s be honest, Browne isn’t likely to ever rival his initial trio of albums – Jackson Browne (1972), For Everyman (1973) and all-time best Late For The Sky (1974) – which, in their own nuanced, melancholy way, hold the lightning in a bottle magic and profound insight of early Dylan. But, it’s encouraging to see him still fighting the good fight, making music on his own terms and raising a fist against tyrants and dumbness and cruelty. As the ever-wise Nathan Moore once pointed out, it’s hard to write a protest song. That Browne isn’t worn down by time and disappointment – two major things that eat away at many baby boomers – should give one some inspiration that their own lives can carry a through-line of purpose, compassion and creativity.

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