That Seventies Sound.(Sound recording review)

Last month, Jackson Browne sued the Republican Party over the use of his hit "Running on Empty" in a campaign commercial. Pundits joked that Browne was a has-been, but here he is with "Time the Conqueror" (Inside), his first album in six years. Both the title song and "Off of Wonderland" find him reminiscing about his own past; "The Arms of Night" ponders without being ponderous; and "Where Were You" is a sharp Katrina lament. Other songs are more bromidic, displaying the earnestness that has sometimes made Browne the target of derision--most recently on Randy Newman's new album "Harps and Angels," where Newman imagines Browne as a kind of Secretary of Humanity. And while a title like "Live Nude Girls" may promise raciness, the song itself is a typical Browne ballad: thoughtful, lyrical, appealingly sung. The most surprising thing about the album is its cover photo, a portrait of the artist as a graybeard.

After Freddie Mercury died, in 1991, the fate of Queen seemed clear: the guitarist Brian May and the drummer Roger Taylor would hang it up, unable to continue without their idiosyncratic, flamboyant front man. But May and Taylor were more resourceful: they simply acquired a less idiosyncratic, less flamboyant front man--the veteran belter Paul Rodgers--and soldiered on, playing old Queen favorites in ...