The Naked Ride Home
One of the most eloquent singer-songwriters of the '70s heyday of the movement, Jackson Browne has always been a master of deciphering what is written on the human heart. On his first outing in six years, Browne again waxes autobiographical, wandering through his extensive interior landscape and transforming his pain into art. But after three decades, his songs of elusive love lost and found have become a little bit wry and world-weary. Witness the bittersweet title song, where the details are so crisp and well drawn that it's difficult to believe that he didn't just lift them from his own life. Similarly, "The Night Inside Me" returns to some of the wrenching themes of 1975'sLate for the Skywith fresh anger. But it is Jackson Browne's turbulent romantic history--his elevation of the small, significant details that make up a life, or more poignantly, show one unraveling--that defines his work, and which is in full flower here.--Jaan Uhelszki