Anxious and filled with dread, I recently downloaded a few childhood favorites to supplement my permanent road trip playlists for a trek to Rochester, Minnesota. The musical additions- as well as the expedition as a whole- were a bitter disappointment.
I vaguely recalled enjoying Glen Campbell’s Goodtime Album as a new release in 1970. The Day-Glo schmaltz sounds ridiculous 55 years later. My life partner and I were grateful the moldy slab of cheese was only 28 minutes long as we hurtled through Iowa.
The lush orchestration and heartbroken laments of Twilight Hours is what I’d expected from Campbell’s album. My nostalgic reveries failed but my lofty expectations for the sixth of the seven albums on Bruce Springsteen’s monumental June release Tracks II: The Lost Albums have been exceeded.
Dan Bejar, Mark Eitzel and Aiden Moffat have been my go-to contemporary sad sack adult pop artists for the past twenty years. Their most heart-wrenching songs are equalled by the compositions on Twilight Hours. As for Glen Campbell, well, I’ll always have “Wichita Lineman”.