Eric Andersen: Memory of the Future : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

"Time takes all that we forget to keep," Eric Andersen sings on Memory of the Future, his first solo album in nine years. Unjustly, he has been one of those forgotten figures himself. The sweetest and most literary of the "new Dylans" to emerge in the Sixties, Andersen has quietly produced an exquisite body of work over the years: songs like "Thirsty Boots," "Violets of Dawn," "Close the Door Lightly When You Go" and "Is It Really Love at All?" as well as his powerfully moving search for lost time, the masterful Ghosts Upon the Road (1989).

The current interest in singer-songwriters might call some deserved attention to Andersen, but Memory warrants a hearing on its own impressive terms. "Chinatown" and the title track find the singer exploring looser, jazzier song structures; Richard Thompson sits in on "Sudden Love"; and Andersen honors his late friend Phil Ochs with a feeling cover of "When I'm Gone."

But Memory's moment of greatest beauty is the haunting ballad "Goin' Gone," which, like so much of Andersen's work, struggles to locate that vaporous instant when something you thought you possessed disappears. It's a poetic quest, kind of like summoning a memory of the future. It's also what Eric Andersen does best - and why he still matters. (RS 816-817)

ANTHONY DeCURTIS