The Eagles burrow so deeply into their classic sound that they sound utterly disconnected from modern times, no matter how hard Don Henley strives to say something, anything about the wretched state of the world on "Long Road Out of Eden," "Frail Grasp on the Big Picture," and "Business as Usual." These tunes are riddled with 21st century imagery, but sonically they play as companions to Henley's brooding end-of-the-'80s hit The End of the Innocence, both in their heavy-handed sobriety and deliberate pace and their big-budget production. Schmit turns Paul Carrack's "I Don't Want to Hear Anymore" into a soft rock gem to stand alongside his own "I Can't Tell You Why." It's all calculated, all designed to hearken back to their past and keep the customer satisfied, but yet it often manages to avoid sounding crass, as the songs are usually strong and the sound is right, capturing the group's peaceful, easy harmonies and Joe Walsh's guitar growl in equal measure. Souther-written "How Long" recalls "Take It Easy," the stiff funk of "Frail Grasp on the Big Picture" echoes back to the clenched riffs of "Life in the Fast Lane," and while perhaps these aren't exact replicas, there's no denying it's possible to hear echoes of everything from "Lyin' Eyes" and "Desperado" to "Life in the Fast Lane," and Timothy B. Nearly every one of their classic rock radio staples has a doppelgänger here, as the J.D. It was a savvy move to release Long Road Out of Eden as a Wal-Mart exclusive, but the album is savvier still, crafted to evoke the spirit and feel of the Eagles' biggest hits. (The album was also available on the group's official website, via .) Far from indulging in a saturation campaign for this long-awaited record, the Eagles released the double-disc Long Road Out of Eden with surgical precision, indulging in few interviews and bypassing conventional retail outlets in favor of an exclusive release with Wal-Mart, which is not only the biggest retailer in America but also where a good chunk of the band's contemporary audience - equal parts aging classic rockers and country listeners - shops. And did they ever take their time - the 13-year gap between Hell Freezes Over and Long Road Out of Eden, their first album since 1979's The Long Run, was nearly as long as that between their 1980 breakup and 1994 reunion.
Fans were satisfied by the oldies, and the band kept raking in the dough, so they could take their time making a new album. It doesn't really matter: there was no pressing need for a new album. So, why did it take them so long to record a new studio album? It could be down to the band's notoriously testy relations - Don Felder did leave and sue the band in the interim, settling out of court in 2007 - it could be that they were running out some contractual clause somewhere, it could be that they were waiting for the money to be right, or the music to be right. They started cashing in almost immediately, driving up ticket prices into the stratosphere as they played gigs on a semi-regular basis well into the new millennium. “But I’d give anything to be there in your arms tonight.” That’s not self-interest - just the purest need.Just because it took them 13 years to deliver a studio sequel to their 1994 live album Hell Freezes Over, don't say it took the Eagles a long time to cash in on their reunion. “I’m not counting on tomorrow/And I can’t tell wrong from right,” Henley sings. There is empathy, too, for the soldier on night patrol, with dirty work to do and everything to lose. But there is a potent restraint to “Long Road Out of Eden,” in the bleak, hollow mix of acoustic guitar and electric piano in the verses and the overcast sigh of the harmonies.
That is brassy censure from a band that, in the Seventies, embodied Hollywood vainglory, shining its klieg-light guitars and vocals on the low roads through high living with an often wicked insight that only comes from knowing each mile intimately. When drummer Don Henley sings, “Now we’re driving dazed and drunk” in a grainy, plaintive voice, it is an entire nation at the wheel, “bloated with entitlement, loaded on propaganda.” But this time the desert is overseas and oil is the new champagne. The song echoes the title hit of 1976’s Hotel California, the Eagles’ defining monument to mirage, money and no escape. “Long Road Out of Eden,” the ten-minute centerpiece of this two-CD, twenty-song album, epitomizes everything that is familiar, surprising, overstretched and, in many ways, right about the entire set.
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