After an exhausing weekend in which I spent part of the time
\nseeing how much beer I could quaff and the other part doing the
\nflight-of-the-bumblebee Christmas shopping, I wanted something easy
\nto review. You know — not a lot of searching through the Pierce
\nArchives (All I want for Christmas is a DVD, a DVD… oh, never
\nmind), not a lot of analyzation needed. And, seeing that we haven’t
\ntouched the Eagles for some time, it seemed right that we take a
\nlook at their self-titled debut today. (Of course, the last thing I
\nneeded to see was a song titled “Chug All Night”…)<\/p>\n
An amalgam of former members of Poco, the Flying Burrito
\nBrothers and Linda Ronstadt’s backing band, The Eagles were the
\nepitomy of the laid-back California country-rock from the get-go.
\nAll members were capable lead singers, and sometimes it seemed like
\nyou needed a scorecard to figure out who was singing where.
\nOriginally a quartet, the lineup of Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Randy
\nMeisner and Bernie Leadon quickly put their stamp on the music
\nindustry with
\nEagles<\/i> — and over 25 years later, it still ain’t bad.<\/p>\n
The album benefits from an early partnership with Jackson
\nBrowne, who co-wrote the band’s first hit, “Take It Easy.” Even
\ntoday, it remains a pleasant jangly pop song that catches you with
\nits melody and guitar work. The introduction of banjo at the final
\nchorus might have thrown the 1972 listener for a loop at the time,
\nbut today it sounds just as natural as the band meant it to be. But
\nBrowne does not really influence the band that much on this effort
\nthat I can hear; the sounds I hear on Browne’s “Doctor My Eyes “and
\nanything off this album are two unique animals.<\/p>\n
\nEagles<\/i> is now known for three songs — the aforementioned
\n“Take It Easy,” “Witchy Woman” and “Peaceful Easy Feeling” — not
\nbad for your first effort. “Witchy Woman” has a special edge carved
\ninto the song, though I’m not sure if it’s the guitar work or
\nHenley’s vocal that makes it sound that much more evil. (Why is it
\nthat Henley always got these types of songs? Two words: “Hotel
\nCalifornia.”) “Peaceful Easy Feeling” definitely shows off the
\nlaid-back California style — the band doesn’t kill themselves
\ndoing this one, and both the band and the listener find themselves
\nrelaxing in the moment.<\/p>\n
The first half of
\nEagles<\/i> is the most solid portion of the album – worth giving
\na spin are “Nightingale” and “Chug All Night” (though I don’t
\nrecommend acting out the title — oh, Christ, my head). It does
\nseem that there are times the band has difficulty keeping the
\nquality level above average. “Train Leaves Here This Morning” is an
\nexample — they try, but the song just fails to take off. “Take The
\nDevil” and “Earlybird” are steps in the right direction, but they
\ntoo don’t shine like they could have.<\/p>\n
And it’s not that I think the singles are the only worthwhile
\nmoments on this album; far from it. I do think that songs like
\n“Tryin'” and “Nightingale” are worth your time to check out and be
\nawed at. I would tend to write off the few sub-par songs as
\n“first-time” jitters. This was, after all, a merging of a few
\ndifferent schools of country-rock, and it would take some time
\nbefore it really jelled. (Some may argue it wouldn’t come together
\nuntil Joe Walsh came in and gave the band a swift kick in the
\nass.)<\/p>\n
\nEagles<\/i> is a pleasant enough listen — not to mention a short
\none, at just around 35 minutes — and is worth investigating to
\nhear how their sound originally came to be. While country music
\nfans may find this to be too close to rock and rock fans may be
\nturned off by the use of banjo and slide guitar, the Eagles blazed
\nthe middle of the road rather well on their first attempt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5764],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-35833","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-eagles","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35833"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=35833"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=35833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}