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(More customer reviews)These words, spoken from choked breath to climax "Hold On Hold Out," seemed strangely satisfying, if plain, from Jackson Browne. His album-long searches for self within personal and social tragedy epitomised the Californicated musical center of the "Me Decade." In 1980's "Hold Out," whose dedication read "This is for Lynne" (Sweeney, Browne's love interest at the time), it was a moment of shared, truthful joy in a career filled with some of rock's most confrontational, confessional elegies.
"Hold Out" is unjustly criticized among Browne fans despite being his lone #1 album. Its seven soaring, expansive tracks celebrate resilience and reassurance, rocking as hard as anything Browne did up to then.
"Oh can we say that I've grown/in some way that we may have yet to be shown?" asks Browne in "Call It A Loan." You hear new, empathetic sensibility prefacing his explicit 80s protest music. This tranisition led critic Dave Marsh to refer to Browne having "Bob Dylan's career inside out."
Browne commits small details to memory here, making peace even at "Hold Out"'s most wistful. He concedes that "she couldn't have been any kinder/if she'd come back and tried to explain" in the savory "That Girl Could Sing." He consoles the then-recently deceased Lowell George's daughter in "Of Missing Persons," wishing, over George's Little Feat bandmate Bill Payne's organ, "May you always see what your life is worth."
In the misunderstood opener "Disco Apocolypse," featuring Payne's roller-rink-style organ, Browne sees survivor's strength in those escaping into disco's strobes. "When the world starts turnin'...and the dreams are burnin'," he sings, "...through the wind and fire they will be dancing still." Unlike The Who's snide "Sister Disco," it features some of the most powerful lyrics written about the disco era without being disco musically. These disco denizens, dresses and shoes new with hearts weary through and through, are the same armored cynics walking "right by like they were safe or something" in "Boulevard."
Crisper than his 1970s studio releases (engineer Niko Bolas later worked with Neil Young, Melissa Etheridge and Billy Joel), "Hold Out" draws its wide-open sound from 1977's live million-selling predecessor, "Running On Empty." It features longtime Browne collaborator David Lindley's evocative solos on "That Girl" and "Hold On, Hold Out" and wailing background vocals throughout from Doug Haywood and Rosemary Butler.
The new decade granted Jackson Browne hit singles, Hollywood romances, social activism and stinging personal rebuke from former friend and collaborator Joni Mitchell. But his greatest 1980s success came in that decade's first year with "Hold Out," a recommended set opening and closing an era for Browne and his singer-songwriter genre.
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Japanese pressing has been remastered and features 7 tracks. Asylum. 2005.--This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.
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