when the instruments drop back and Browne stops singing and starts speaking.

It's a measure of both the grandiosity and simplicity of Browne's intentions that this album comes down to his saying – without the aid of melody or harmony–"I love you." And it's a measure of Hold Out's failure that these words sound flat, forced, even selfish: a meaningful private act made embarrassing by its public expression. Also, the words are a letdown, since they follow the funniest, most heartbreakingly romantic line on the record. The singer is speaking directly to the woman he's been falling in love with throughout the LP. You can sense that he's awkwardly trying to breach the gulf between them. And when he hitches up his pants and says. "See–I always figured I was going to meet somebody here," you know that Los Angeles' coolest, smartest urban cowboy is just as vulnerable and ridiculous as you and I. Browne, a romantic to the end, makes such long-shot faith seem not only possible but necessary.

Hold Out is a trade-off of such moments. Duff lines war with taut ones, puffed-up commonplaces with perceptions: "Does it take a death to learn what a life is worth?" versus "She could have turned out to be almost anyone/Almost anyone–/With the possible exception/Of who I wanted her to be." Most of the time, Browne loses. Lyrically. Hold Out is probably the weakest record he's ever made – an album on which all of the big decisions are carefully considered, but many of the small ones backfire. What we have is a song cycle with scarcely a single tune that has the moral imagination, pop grace or writerly precision of Browne's best material. In the end, Hold Out is simply a set of moods that don't quite catch.

On paper, the LP makes sense, and you can almost imagine Browne's preproduction notes. A circle game, taking up where The Pretender left off but reversing the order. From antiro mantic break up to romantic renewal. Semiautobiographical About loss and fear, ties that bind and ties that bond. An exploration of the pull of work. stardom and bittersweet expectations. Images that recur from composition to composition, but songs that stand on their own. A core of players for every number. A consistent sound. An urban feel that accurately reflects the sidewalk hustle and freeway rush of Hollywood. Hints of neon and a touch of chrome.

So what