NILS LOFGREN : MOUNTAINS

 

  1. Ain't The Truth Enough
  2. Only Ticket Out
  3. Back In Your Arms
  4. Won't Cry No More (For Charlie Watts)
  5. Nothin's Easy (For Amy)
  6. Dream Killer
  7. Only Your Smile
  8. I Remember Her Name
  9. We Better Find It
  10. Angel Blues

Label : Castle Track Road Records

Release Date : July 21, 2023

Length : 38:26

Review (AllMusic) : Mountains belongs among a cluster of albums that represents a late-career renaissance for Nils Lofgren. That many of those records carry credits by Neil Young & Crazy Horse is a vagary of the calendar. Lofgren rejoined Crazy Horse in 2018, filling in for the retired Frank "Pancho" Sampedro, completing the Colorado album in 2019, the same year the guitarist released his own Blue with Lou. Then, COVID-19 hit, and Lofgren stayed with Young, knocking out two Young albums in less than a year, along with the 2023 album All Roads Lead Home, which balanced new songs by Lofgren and his Crazy Horse compadres, Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot. All those records have a loose, homegrown quality while Mountains, released just months after All Roads Lead Home, decidedly does not. Technically the first collection of original material Lofgren has released in a decade, Mountains is a product of the studio, filled with sequenced rhythms, polished punch, and superstar cameos ranging from jazz legend Ron Carter to Ringo Starr (alas, the bassist and drummer do not form a rhythm section together). It's also possible to discern the long gestation of Mountains through its deliberate pace: it has more than its share of ballads and many of its soul-stirring numbers move to a stately rhythm. Even the blues boogie "Won't Cry No More" - a tribute to the late Rolling Stone Charlie Watts which acts like a bookend to "Keith Don't Go" - plays it tight, not loose. Far from seeming sluggish, Mountains feels considered and thoughtful. Lofgren doesn't shy away from big emotions - one song, "Nothin's Easy," is explicitly dedicated to his wife Amy, who also serves as the album's co-producer, yet many of the other tracks feel informed by their relationship - and that open-heartedness is the key to the album's success: it enlivens the studio precision and gloss, giving it a warm human pulse.

Review (Wikipedia) : Mountains is a studio album by Nils Lofgren, released on July 21, 2023, through Cattle Track Road Records. It features guest appearances from David Crosby, Ringo Starr, Neil Young, and Ron Carter, and received generally positive reviews from critics. Lofgren stated that the album started out "as a form of therapy but it very quickly grew beyond that" and that it was "so freeing to work without any restrictions", calling it "some of the most inspired work" he has ever made. He wrote and recorded the album at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona, also enlisting his regular engineer Jamison Weddle.

Review (PopMatters) : Nils Lofgren never fails to deliver albums filled with glorious guitar playing, heartfelt songs, and a soulful look at the human condition. That his latest, Mountains, features all should come as no surprise. Analyzing a Lofgren album can seem self-defeating because his artistic greatness comes down to this: No one can play or write as he can. Like Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen, who have had Lofgren on hand for some of their greatest works, he writes the way only he can, and imitating it proves futile at the very least and embarrassing at the worst. What is it that he does on guitar that’s so fascinating? Maybe nothing that others can’t do, technique-wise, but they’ll never have Lofgren’s heart or his fingers. Surely, Jackson Browne could have written a song like “Dream Killer”, but there, too, it wouldn’t have that deft and elusive Lofgren touch. If you have a handful of Lofgren recordings (and by this time, you’d better), you can probably guess that positive vibes prevail in the lyrical department, that love is good, darkness is bad and soul-robbing, and if we think really hard, maybe we can stop all this pain. That’s all true here too. Coming four years after his last record, the Blue with Lou, which featured five tunes he’d written with Lou Reed and which was a particular high point in a career filled with them, Mountains doesn’t disappoint. The guitars are nice and loud, the playing vivid and imaginative, and the writing as strong as it’s ever been in Lofgren’s career. In the former category, one only needs to listen to the aforementioned “Dream Killer”, which is filled with plenty of hot licks/cool tricks and other things that Lofgren pulls out of his hat. He might be saving the acrobatics for the records these days rather than doing backflips on the stage, but that’s OK. “Won’t Cry No More” (dedicated to Charlie Watts) has plenty of filthy, gutsy maneuvers, the kind of thing that Lofgren has done since his days leading Grin and which we audiences can’t get enough of. If “Only Ticket Out” sounds like 1989, that’s OK too; we wouldn’t have it any other way. He’s joined by a crack group of musicians, including Ron Carter on “Only Your Smile” (the veteran bassist elevates the track in a way that only he can), Andy Newmark adds drums to two pieces, and Kevin McCormick lends his inimitable and inestimable work to four tunes. This might also very well mark the last time that Neil Young and David Crosby appeared on the same record, albeit via two different tracks—Young lends his voice to “Nothin’s Easy (For Amy)”, and Crosby does a fine job on “I Remember Her Name”. It’s hard to say if this is Lofgren’s finest hour or just another fine hour in a long line of them, and in the end, it doesn’t really matter. We’re lucky to have him and his music and fortunate to have entries such as this one in his body of song. Nils Lofgren is one of the finest ever to grace recorded music, and with each album, he delivers something we didn’t know we needed but now somehow can’t live without.

Review (The Fire Note) : Unless you’re one of those people that read the album credits, checking out who produced, who played bass, who guested on which guitar solo, there’s a chance you’ve missed Nils Lofgren’s storied career. While only 19 years old, Lofgren played guitar and piano on Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush album in 1970, which developed into a long association with him, contributing to some of Young’s more experimental albums of the late ’70s and ’80s. More recently, he joined Young and his band Crazy Horse to record Colorado (2019), Barn (’21), and World Record (’22). In his early 20’s, Lofgren led the DC band Grin and recorded four albums before embarking on a solo career in the mid-70s. While Lofgren released a series of strong singles, he never broke out big as a solo artist, although I used to hear his song about a famous boxing match, “No Mercy” on the radio quite a bit. When Little Steven left the E Street band to go solo, fronting his own band the Disciples of Soul, Bruce Springsteen called on Lofgren to fill in on tour in the mid-80’s and he played on a few of Springsteen’s albums before The Boss stepped away for his own solo adventures. When he launched an E Street Reunion Tour in ’99 and 2000, Little Steven was back on Bruce’s left side, but Lofgren was on his right, where they’ve both stayed for over the last two decades. They are currently on the road in Europe, returning to play the States (and make up a show in Columbus, Ohio) in September. Now, playing in two of the biggest and most successful bands in Rock & Roll history would be enough for most people, but Lofgren recorded an album with Foreigner’s Lou Graham in ’87, has also gone out twice with Ringo Starr’s All-Starr band summer tours, in ’89 and ’92, and over the course of nearly 5 decades has released nearly 30 solo albums, most on indie labels. Lofgren says writing the new songs for his album, Mountains, was therapy to cope with the pandemic and all that was going on in the world. The album’s opening track, “Ain’t the Truth Enough,” takes on the Jan. 6 insurrection, by making it personal, when a wife confronts her husband when he returns from the events of that day, his head “all filled with lies/kool-aid hypnotized.” It’s a crunchy rock track, with plenty of Lofgren’s slide guitar, with a solid drum beat throughout by Ringo himself, it’s got a classic rock feel, with a strong Gospel chorus harmonies by E Street Band background singer, Cindy Mizelle. And the all star contributions include Neil Young sitting in on the acoustic love song “Nothing’s Easy,” the late David Crosby sang harmonies on the choruses of “I Remember Her Name,” bassist Ron Carter adding a noteworthy jazz bassline to the piano ballad “Only Your Smile” which is sung in duet with Mizelle, the Howard College Gospel Choir add their soaring soul harmonies to “Back In Your Arms,” and then Starr joins Lofgren a second time to sing the chorus of “We Better Find It.” But for the added layer of cool from Lofgren’s celebrity musician friends, when you drop into the gritty rocker, “Only Ticket Out,” with plenty of strong guitar playing from Lofgren in the Mike Campbell vein and solid vocal delivery of this Petty-like track, and it’s clear that he doesn’t need to be another artist’s sideman to be heard. Or take the blues rocker, dedicated to the late Stones’ drummer Charlie Watts, “Won’t Cry No More,” which displays some serious lead playing over the solid rhythms of bassist Kevin McCormick, and drummer Andy Newmark. Mizelle’s vocal additions add just the write soulful seasoning, and Lofgren has produced in his own Scottsdale, AZ studio, maximizing the high quality recording capabilities. Some of the strongest songwriting here, though, carries the weight of Lofgren’s appreciation for his wife and partner, Amy, who’s the “light shining through” in “Nothin’s Easy.” In “I Remember Her Name” he tells the story of their meeting and eventual romance and marriage, and she’s clearly the inspiration for “Only Your Smile,” and “Back in Your Arms.” Clearly spending most of the last 50 years playing music with two of the best known and loved songwriters has nurtured a similar skill in Nils Lofgren, a serious guitar player, and a fine front man in his own right. Just the killer guitar playing on “Dream Killer” and here and there throughout the album’s 10 tracks would be enough, but he’s given us some really fine songs as well, establishing himself as veteran solo artist among his peers.