JACKSON BROWNE AND DAVID LINDLEY - Love Is Strange

This is Jackson Browne’s fifth acoustic live album in five years but it is the best one yet! Recorded in Spain way back in 2006 it is the best of the three, relaxed, vibrant, humorous and of course with Browne’s catalogue full of cerebral exercising. What brings the relaxed vibrancy is the group of musicians that add grace notes to Browne’s songs that heighten the listener’s attention. David Lindley has been a long time collaborator of Jackson Browne but never has he made such a splash as he does here. The eclectic and eccentric instrumentalist adds flourishes with his Hawaiian guitar and fiddle. That fiddle blends beautifully Carlos Nunez’s whistles on a haunting Celtic arrangement of Crow On The Cradle. Elsewhere there are other guest appearances by singers Kiko Veneno and Luz Casal. Yet it is the aforementioned and credited on the cover Lindley and Tino Di Geraldo’s percussion as well as just their camaraderie that make this a snap shot of a great tour.

When Browne gets the listener’s attention, he can’t half make you think. Whether it is personal introspective critique or cultural prophecy Browne rarely wastes an opportunity. Love Is Strange is not Browne’s most political work but perhaps the song that stands out is. Crow On The Cradle was written by Englishman who also wrote hymns that lived on the edge including Lord Of The Dance which is apparently one of the most popular hymns sung in English schools. Anyway, Crow On The Cradle has this children’s lullaby feel with the shadow of Nuclear catastrophe hanging over it. Browne used it at his No Nukes gig back in the 80s and the version here is scary!

The main theme though, and I am sure it is not intentional and perhaps just in my own head, is the search for self which was Browne’s obsession in the seventies. Lindley’s sharpening of Bright Baby Blues was a re-revelation to me with its brilliant –

'Cause I've been up and down this highway
Far as my eyes can see
No matter how fast I run
I can never seem to get away from me
No matter where I am
I can't help feeling I'm just a day away
From where I want to be

Running On Empty continues that theme as it races through Browne’s life, counting off his age at different stages and realising that all his Californian buddies are there highway searching like him -

“Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels
I don't know how to tell you all just how crazy this life feels
I look around for the friends that I used to turn to, to pull me through
Looking into their eyes I see them running too” 

Looking East written some twenty years later than the previous two seems to be touching on some kind of spiritual answer –

“Hunger in the midnight, hunger at the stroke of noon
Hunger in the mansion, hunger in the rented room
Hunger on the TV, hunger on the printed page
And there's a God-sized hunger underneath the laughing and the rage”

As I pointed out though this is not the most intense of Browne’s work and he doo waps the title track into another fifties track that he made his own. One of his biggest hits of the seventies Stay. There are also some Lindley songs, Kiko Veneno does a song in Spanish Tu Tranquilo which is an unrecognisable Spanish version of Take It Easy done elsewhere here in English and a female vocal on These Days by Luz Casal. Most interesting of all is Browne’s first attempt at a Spiritual. He told Songwriter magazine in the mid nineties of his interest in exploring religion in his music. This might be his first attempt. At the same time Springsteen was using Spirituals in his Seeger Sessions, Browne and Lindley catch the bug and do a great version of Sit Down Servant.

All in all, you wish you’d been there and the original suspicion that it was double album of live stuff too many in a short number of years is proven well mistaken.

(note: Steve devotes an entire Chapter in his book The Rock Cries Out to the spiritual questions and answers strewn across Jackson Browne’s career)

Comments

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