Search - Joe Walsh :: Songs for a Dying Planet

Joe Walsh - His Most Overlooked Album

Steven Sly | Kalamazoo, MI United States | 06/18/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"After several lackluster albums Walsh pulled a complete 360 and came out with one of his best albums of his career in my opinion with "Dying Planet". To me this is probably Joe's most underrated album. It pretty much tanked at the cash register and I don't think it even charted in the top 200. The single "Vote For Me" got a little bit of airplay on AOR stations, but quickly faded away. This is really sad as the album contains a bunch of great songs highlighted by what may be the best thing he has ever written called "Decades". "Decades" is a 12 minute long epic that takes a travel in time through the history of the U.S. in the last century. A few of the lyrics are slightly awkward, but for the most part this is a great little piece of work. The rest of the album also very good. "Shut Up", "Fairbanks Alaska", and "Vote For Me" feature Walsh's always sharp sense of humor. "Theme From Baroque Weirdoes" is a nice little instrumental. "I Know", "Certain Situations" "The Friend Song", and "It's All Right" are just good songs. The only two things that keep me from giving this a 5 star rating are the tracks "Coyote Love" which is pretty much awful and a throw away cover of "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow". Even with these two clunkers I think this is one of Walsh's best and definitely his most underrated. Unfortunately this is the last studio album Walsh has released as of 2008. If you are a Walsh fan and don't have this one, you should pick it up."

A Tragic Message...

Edward Z. Rosenthal | Collingswood, NJ, USA | 01/03/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

""Song For a Dying Planet" is not an artistic statement, a contrived metaphor to catch our interest. It's an honest accurate description of what Joe Walsh was seeing. The weight of that awareness must have been crushing, it's astonishing that Joe managed to write about anything else. So, to me, it's odd how careful Joe is to not be self indulgent on this album, writing only one, maybe two songs on the subject. He could have written 10 or 15, he certainly had plenty to say on the state of the world. I heard him on Howard Stern talking about it a decade ago, and he was seriously concerned. It's now 17 years since this disc's release and things are worse, more grim and hopeless. Even more people living destructive, wasteful, stupid lifestyles.



Is there a point to dwelling or obsessing on this subject? I don't know, and apparently neither does Joe, 'cause he hasn't written an album since. He's kept busy doing Eagles and James Gang tours, but that's all mindless time filler compared to what he'd done on his own. I saw him solo in Philly in 1996 and he was so good. He'd just gotten sober and wanted to have fun. He did, and so did we. But it seems he's retreated from his realization that we're all very quickly heading for some truly horrible "stuff". He is doing bizarre, maybe irrational things lately, appearing with "Trans-Siberian Orchestra" as recently as a couple weeks ago. What's wrong with that, you ask? Have you listened to Trans-Siberian Orchestra? It's like Jimi Hendrix playing with River Dance... strange.



Anyway, as far as this album goes, or any album, for that matter, it almost seems absurd to bother critiquing it. If the planet is in fact in such peril then it's futile to expend any energy trying to impress the corrupt, oblivious, destructive masses (that's you all) with my irrelevant, puny opinion. But, because Joe has reached out with what I feel is a deeply heartfelt plea for action, or at least reaction, I'll state that there are some good songs here. He wields his trademark wit on "Shut Up" and "Vote For Me". They're both very funny and pretty good, if not great. There's a couple good ol' rockers with "Certain Situations" and "It's All Right", again not quite his best. His musical experiments continue with "Coyote Love" that has a great mechanical rhythm under fierce guitar. His series of recurring instrumentals continues beautifully on "Theme from Baroque Weirdos" that drifts along on gentle synthesizer piano, that some might find just slightly corny. He does a peculiar cover of Carol King's "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?", that seems to be asking if we will still listen to him after we hear what he has to say on this album. He hasn't given us much chance to decide, nothing new for us to listen to in too long. "Decades" is a sprawling twelve plus minute opus that traces the questionable conduct of man through the 20th Century. It is, in effect, a dour bagpipe funeral march that introduces the brief and lovely "Song for a Dying Planet", composed of just simple slow piano chords, tick-toking clock echoes, and the sounds of children playing. His voice on this one is as earnest and soulful as I've ever heard him. Contained despair, perhaps. To say it's a sad song, or a somber song, or a tragic song would be meaningless. Of course it's all those things, what else should a song about global biological devastation be. It's also a gorgeously grand expression of love and sorrow that towers over just about anything anyone, anywhere has written or performed since. His bare bones elegant approach subtly elevates his direct impassioned ode to poetry of the most noble sort. It's so much more than a song, it's a mythic lamentation. Haven't you heard it?



Not the rollicking, knee slapping good time album that Joe's fans perhaps could have expected him to make, the overall mood is more than tinged with melancholy. For sure, Joe's albums have always had their minor key, bluesy edge. But what sets this one apart is a deeply dark, persistent, haunting echo; a mournful knell sounding across the countryside. And the decades long near-silence from Joe has only intensified this final composition's sad, somber, tragic tolling."