I don’t really like the Eagles. That is to say, I love a lot of their earlier songs–Witchy Woman, One of These Nights–but by and large, the longer the Eagles wrote songs, the more I disliked them (the Hotel California album is pretty deplorable). However, back in 2003, I was a young punk kid with a new drivers license and a copy of the Ataris’ So Long Astoria stuck in my car’s CD player. One of my favorite songs on that album was the Henley penned Boys of Summer, and as I grew to adulthood, I have come to prefer the original version. And to be completely honest, if I needed to pay money for this album on the strength of that single, I wouldn’t have ponied it up. But when you raid your parents’ vinyl collections, you take chances.

Don Henley also wasn’t afraid to take some chances on this album. Even though it must have been obvious to anyone involved (some of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, Lindsey Buckingham) that Boys of Summer was the best song on the disc, no one must have felt like it was worth dwelling on. There’s some 80s rockabilly (Man with a Mission), tongue-in-cheek country balladry (You’re Not Drinking Enough, which is the only song that sounds Eaglesy), and synthpop bounce (Building the Perfect Beast, All She Wants to Do is Dance, which are both highlights). But the most affecting tracks are his ballads, most notably Not Enough Love in the World, Land of the Living, and Sunset Grill, which is the closest analog to Boys of Summer’s crisp atmosphere. In the end, for all of its accolades and legacy, the beast Henley built is not perfect. There’s more hit than miss here, it comes off a bit uneven, including a couple warts that should have been removed before release (Man with a Mission and Not Drinking Enough, probably). Everything else is top notch 80s pop.