Creating the perfect debut record is a difficult task. It needs to capture a compelling snapshot that introduces them to the world while also fitting their potential in the same frame. Debuts are often youthful, packed with the ambition of an artist with something to prove.

But on his own debut, Jackson Browne seems to skip all that, starting instead in the middle of a respectable career.

Saturate Before Using (I know it’s not the actual title, hush) may have been the twenty-four year old Jackson Browne’s first album, but he was hardly a newcomer. He had already found modest success as a songwriter, writing tunes recorded by such names like The Eagles, The Byrds, and Joan Baez. But for my money, the most noteworthy of these recordings is “These Days” by Nico, a song rife with wisdom and regret that was written when Browne was just sixteen years old (he even played the electric guitar part on that recording, when he was nineteen).

Eight years later, David Geffen finally decided to put Browne on his Asylum Records imprint, allowing him to release his songs on his own terms. And when songs like “These Days” are your starting point as a teenager, the songs you write eighteen years later are the work of a bonafide veteran.

We’re talking about songs like “Jamaica Say You Will,” “Song For Adam,” and the catchy-as-hell “Doctor My Eyes,” his first top ten single. And across this disc are the same types of intelligent lyricism you’d expect from his early songwriting career. On “Doctor My Eyes,” he laments at the state of the world, saying “I’ve done all that I could / To see the evil and the good / without hiding.” On “Something Fine,” he writes of the numbness of addiction, singing, “The world outside is tugging like a beggar at my sleeve / Oh, that’s much too old a story to believe.”

And if his way with words wasn’t enough to make this record a classic, the performances are incredible. Browne’s fingerpicked acoustic guitar makes even the most tragic moments (see: “Something Fine”) delicately gorgeous. The more upbeat tunes are met with one of the finest folk rock bands around. The band is impressive without being distracting, letting the songs speak on their own without cluttering it up with drum fills and busy guitar licks (see especially the transformation at the end of “Rock Me On the Water“) And of course, there’s Browne’s own voice, which is as strong as any of the other artists who recorded his songs earlier in his career.

Nothing on here is as catchy and urgent as “Doctor My Eyes,” instead spending most of its time in pensive ballads. But it doesn’t have to be. Even at its most restrained, the songs are just as captivating as the single. And after the success of this record, the floodgates were blown wide open, setting the stage for one of the most underrated solo careers in rock and roll history.