If I say the name Nils Lofgren, what picture does that form in
\nyour head?<\/p>\n
If you’re just a casual rock fan, you’ll remember Lofgren as a
\nmember of Bruce Springsteen’s E-Street Band. (I fell in to this
\ncategory, by the way – never really followed his solo career.) If
\nyou’ve done your homework, you’ll remember Lofgren’s stints with
\nCrazy Horse and Grin, as well as his solo career that took off
\nagain after Springsteen dissolved the E-Street Band.<\/p>\n
However, Lofgren seems to be ready to become the leader of the
\nnext generation of story-telling songwriters, as evidenced on his
\nnew album
\nAcoustic Live<\/i>. While it sometimes is a lot to swallow in one
\nsitting, it is one of the most beautiful albums I’ve heard all
\nyear.<\/p>\n
Featuring mostly an army of acoustic guitars (provided by
\nLofgren, his brothers Tom, Michael and Mark, and Paul Bell) and
\nsome keyboards from brother Tom, Lofgren powers through 17 tracks
\nrecorded in January 1997. Not being a big follower of his career, I
\nhonestly don’t know if all these are new songs or if this is a
\ngreatest hits-live package – but if all the material is this good,
\nwho cares either way?<\/p>\n
Lofgren sings a lot about love and the processes of growing up
\n(his relationship with his daughter on “Little On Up” – a song that
\nalmost had me in tears, the loss of a childhood friend on “Man In
\nThe Moon”), and never gets too preachy about what he sings.
\nBalanced by the guitar work (some of which is simply magnificent),
\nLofgren seems to know where the right point is to stop singing and
\nlet the message sink in – smart move.<\/p>\n
The musicianship alone is worth the hour-plus it takes to get
\nthrough
\nAcoustic Live<\/i>; check out the singing guitar line on “Some
\nMust Dream,” a rhythm pattern I could have listened to the whole
\ndisc. The sounds this disc contain are simply magical, and must be
\nexperienced.<\/p>\n
The only drawback to the album is that things tend to start
\nblending together around the midpoint of the disc. If you’re not
\ncarefully paying attention, you might allow tracks like “Believe,”
\n“Black Books” and “To Your Heart” to kind of mesh into one that
\nyour ears hear. That does those songs – and the album – an
\ninjustice, but I honestly don’t know how Lofgren could have fixed
\nthis. Likewise, the album’s ending tracks, “Mud In Your Eye” and
\n“No Mercy,” don’t hold up quite as well as some of the more
\npowerful material.<\/p>\n
The question must then be posed: What will
\nAcoustic Live<\/i> do for Lofgren? I think it will accomplish two
\nthings: First, it will establish him as a powerful
\nsinger\/songwriter who can tell a story unlike many others in his
\ngenre. Second, if people give this disc a chance and listen to a
\nfew tracks, it should win him over a plethora of new fans. (I know
\nI’ll be picking up some of his older works as a result of listening
\nto this disc.)<\/p>\n
\nAcoustic Live<\/i> is an album that Lofgren has probably waited
\nhis whole career to produce – and the end result shows the wait was
\nwell worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7501],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-39216","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-nils-lofgren","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39216","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=39216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39216"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}