Don Henley: Inside Job : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

On his first two solo albums (I Can't Stand Still and Building the Perfect Beast), Don Henley made yearning his great theme. Something had disappeared that could never be recovered -- the Sixties? the Eagles? love? hope? -- and songs like "The Boys of Summer" and "Long Way Home" summoned the deep ache of that loss. On The End of the Innocence, Henley edged closer to acceptance and a renewed sense of possibility, especially on the album's masterful closing song, "The Heart of the Matter."

That seed of possibility flowers on Inside Job, his first solo album in eleven years. On the aptly titled "Everything Is Different Now," Henley whispers, "I hate to tell you this, but I'm very, very happy." That song ends a thematic trilogy that includes "Taking You Home" and "For My Wedding" (written by Larry John McNally), about love's transforming power. Unlike most paeans to domestic bliss -- Henley is now married with three children -- these songs convey genuine wonder, a palpable gratitude to "the god of simple things."

Those sunny emotions are only part of the album's mosaic, however. The sleek, insinuating "Miss Ghost" evokes the temptation of an alluring ex-lover, while the devastating ballad "Damn It, Rose" mourns a friend's suicide. On a more public front, "Workin' It" attacks the tyranny of "corporation nation-states" and a culture in which "packaging is all that heaven is." The sly, caustic "They're Not Here, They're Not Coming," meanwhile, shreds the desperate fantasy that kindly aliens will rescue us from a world where there is "no authenticity, no sign of soul/The radio won't play George and Merle."

Produced by Henley and Stan Lynch, Inside Job is a sonic marvel. Different as they are, each song finds its own atmospheric sound, with guitars, keyboards and background singers shifting textures in continual, sensual motion. As always, Henley's extraordinary voice -- a choirboy's earnestness abraded by R&B swagger -- drenches the meticulous, midtempo arrangements with powerful feeling.

Inside Job ends with the soaring "My Thanksgiving," on which Henley sings, "For everyone who helped me start/And for everything that broke my heart/For every breath, for every day of living/This is my Thanksgiving." Those are not hip sentiments, just the honest expression of a man who, at fifty-two, is producing work that easily ranks among the finest of his career.