I always find myself frustrated when listening to Eagles. The group has so much potential: good songwriting (although many of their greatest songs were written or co-written by non-members), superior musicianship, and fabulous arranging (in my opinion, the best rock arrangers in the business). Unfortunately, they often choose to squander this remarkable talent on country ballads and “adult contemporary” fluff. The band makes even these genres sound great, but they really shine when they play rock & roll.

Long Road Out Of Eden is the first studio album by the group in 28 years, so my expectations were quite high. (They did release a few new compositions on their reunion live album Hell Freezes Over and each member put out at least one solo album in the interim as well.) Apparently not much has changed in that nearly 3 decades, because Long Road Out Of Eden sounds like it could have been a much more immediate follow-up to The Long Run. All of the same elements are present: catchy songs, brilliant arrangements, polished production, intertwined guitars, and lush vocal harmonies in a set of 20 songs spanning pop, rock & roll, country, folk, and rhythm & blues styles.

The double album opens with the beautiful acapella piece “No More Walks In The Wood”, then segues into the J. D. Souther tune “How Long”, which had been a part of the Eagles live set early in their career and (not surprisingly) sounds like a rewrite of “Take It Easy” or “Already Gone”. The third track, “Busy Being Fabulous” is a fairly non-descript soft rock tune, while “What Do I Do With My Heart” is a surprisingly enjoyable ballad in the vein of “Best Of My Love”. The disco-influenced rock of “Guilty Of The Crime” is pleasant, but fails to make much of an impression. “I Don’t Want To Hear Any More” is another pretty Timothy B. Schmit-led ballad. “Waiting In The Weeds” is built on a strong Henley melody accompanied by a simple arpeggiated acoustic guitar line and a nice piano interlude. “No More Cloudy Days” showcases all that is good about an Eagles mid-tempo tune: an interesting bassline supporting chords strummed on an acoustic guitar and interjections from Joe Walsh’s lead guitar, all supporting an enchanting vocal performance. The next track, “Fast Company”, shows off everything is wrong with much of the material Henley and Frey put out in the 80s: grating falcetto and an attempt at a strange funky-disco beat. The first disc closes with another Schmit ballad, “Do Something”, which manages to be good in spite of the cloying country slide guitar, and “You Are Not Alone”, an uninspired Glenn Frey tune.

The second disc starts with the sprawling title track, which has an out-of-place solo oboe part for an introduction. The song meanders along as a hard-hitting slow rocker into the controlled burn of a fantastic Walsh solo. Thematically, “Long Road Out Of Eden” seems to be a sequel to “The Last Resort”, but with a much darker musical framework. The short instrumental that follows, “I Dreamed There Was No War” sounds just like an epilogue to it. The sinister “Somebody” is the hardest rocking track on the album, and its driving bass pulse and swirling guitars fit perfectly with the wry vocals. “Frail Grasp On The Big Picture” is another delightful attempt at hard rock, worth listening to simply for Henley’s sardonic delivery of lyrics like “All your romantic liasons don’t deal with eternal questions like Who left the cap off the freakin’ toothpaste? Whose turn to take the garbage out?” and more of Walsh’s guitar work. The bass and percussion groove of “Last Good Time In Town” is strange, and the whispered background vocal echoes make the track even more bizarre. “I Love To Watch A Woman Dance”, a nearly unaccompanied Frey vocal, is painful to listen to. “Business As Usual” and “Center Of The Universe” are solid, but the latin-flavored closing track “It’s Your World Now” feels like it does not belong.

The Eagles songwriters mostly stuck to their usual lyrical territories. Frey’s contributions are introspective slice-of-life dramas, while Henley continues his preoccupation with social issues and both pen the obligatory lament of lost love. Timothy B. Schmit gets co-writing credit on a few tunes, but is not a principal author anywhere, while Joe Walsh is only credited on a single track, the quirky “Last Good Time In Town”. This helps to explain why the album sounds more like the first three Eagles offerings (before they joined the band) than it does Hotel Califonia or The Long Run. The absence of Walsh’s writing in particular is probably responsible for the lack of a real hard rock tune such as “Life In The Fast Lane” or instrumental showcase like “Hotel California”.

There are several songs that had been included in the Eagles live set over the last few years but never released as a studio version that I hoped to see on this album (primarily the 9/11 reflection “Hole In The World” and Alcoholics Anonymous tribute “One Day At A Time”), but neither was provided. (Apparently “Hole In The World” was included on the Deluxe Collector’s Edition.)

I cannot explain the choice by a band that frequently rails against consumerism to release their work exclusively through WalMart, but it reeks of hypocrisy. I am also annoyed by the band’s refusal to make Steuart Smith a member, even though he has been playing Don Felder’s parts in concert for a decade and co-wrote five of the songs on this album.

There is some great material here, roughly a single album’s worth. In particular, I recommend “No More Walks In The Wood”, “How Long”, “What Do I Do With My Heart”, “Waiting In The Weeds”, “No More Cloudy Days”, “Do Something”, “Long Road Out Of Eden”, “Somebody”, and “Frail Grasp On The Big Picture”. Most of the rest of the songs are good if not remarkable, although I’ll be pleased to never hear “I Love To Watch A Woman Dance” or “It’s Your World Now” again. Unfortunately, most of the really good songs are ballads. Nevertheless, I would recommend that any fan of Eagles pick this up.