Jimmy Buffett: A-1-A : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Like his friend Michael Murphey, Jimmy Buffett belongs to the "cosmic cowboy" school of country rock and is enjoying belated commercial acceptance. While Buffett's tunes are pretty much standardized country-rock fare, his cynical lyrics have bite, savvy and humor, while his singing recalls both Murphey and Waylon Jennings without having quite the distinction of either. In his best songs Buffett evokes a man of the road; his special region is southern Florida, whose oceanic mythology entrances him. The album's high point, "A Pirate Looks at Forty," is a touching ballad that equates pirate legend with lost youth. The narrative songs, "Migration" and "Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season," detail more vividly the squalor and enervating languor of life between Miami Beach and Key West. Don Gant's solid Nashville production features the guitars of Steve Goodman, Reggie Young, Roger Bartlett and Doyle Gresham's tasty pedal steel. AlA is likable, intelligent and unpretentious.