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Title: Eagles – The Long Run (2023 MFSL UltraDisc UHR SACD) (1979/2023)
Genre: Classic Rock, Country Rock
Format: SACD ISO

Originally intended as a clever poke at the era’s trends that critics maintained were making the band irrelevant, the title of and music on The Long Run continue to prove the Eagles got the last laugh. Created in the wake of the group’s demanding tour for the blockbuster Hotel California, the 1979 record ultimately became the final record the Eagles would create for nearly three decades. Stacked with first-rate material and three mammoth singles, the seven-times-platinum effort ensured the Eagles never drifted far from the public’s consciousness.

Sourced from the original analog master tapes and housed in a mini-LP gatefold sleeve package, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition hybrid SACD presents The Long Run in audiophile sound. Akin to the audiophile label’s other Eagles SACDs, this collectible edition plays with organic richness, spectacular dynamics, and microscopic levels of detail. Songs come across with an epic sweep and feature front-to-back soundstages that give the music desirable air, roominess, and separation. “Who is gonna make it?/We’ll find out in the long run,” posits Don Henley on the album’s opening track, an R&B-fueled classic that reached No. 8 on the charts. Henley later addressed the irony of the lyrics; his group was in the process of breaking apart when he wrote it. Yet the singer-songwriter and colleague Glenn Frey clearly knew something others failed to recognize. Related themes of survival, resilience, and dark humor course throughout The Long Run, which also marks the arrival of bassist Timothy B. Schmit. His lead vocal anchors the No. 8 hit “I Can’t Tell You Why,” a staple he co-wrote with Henley and Frey. That dynamic duo has a hand in all but one of the songs, “In the City,” Joe Walsh’s slide-guitar-appointed ode to endurance. Walsh also shares a writing credit on the closing “The Sad Cafe,” a melodramatic favorite whose lineage extends to another of the band’s longtime collaborators, J.D. Souther. He, along with Frey and Henley, teamed with Detroit legend Bob Seger on penning the record’s signature anthem: the Grammy-winning “Heartache Tonight.” Fueled by rhythmic handclaps, a romping groove, and the band’s trademark California-bred country-rock style, the chart-topper comfortably sits alongside deep cuts such as the winking shuffle “The Disco Strangler” and cinematic “King of Hollywood.” The challenges and pressures associated with making The Long Run after dealing with the unimaginable success of Hotel California ended up grounding the Eagles. Yet the album’s enduring merit, performances, and melodies confirmed Henley and Frey’s beliefs. The Eagles are still thriving. They made it. The long run continues.

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Title: Eagles – Hotel California (2023 MFSL UltraDisc UHR SACD) (1976/2023)
Genre: Classic Rock, Country Rock
Format: SACD ISO

The moment the instantly recognizable intertwined guitar passage on the title track to the Eagles’ Hotel California begins, the record’s genius becomes obvious all over again. Ranked the 118th Greatest Album of All Time by Rolling Stone, certified by RIAA as the third best-selling LP in history, and looked upon as the foundation upon which the Golden State’s mid-’70s rustic music scene was built, the 1976 landmark is a music staple immune to shifts in trends, eras, and styles. Fearlessly addressing the chaos and consequences of American life, its songs remain strikingly prescient and gain credence with each passing day.
Sourced from the original analog master tapes, Mobile Fidelity’s hybrid SACD ensures you will want to permanently check into and never leave this particular Hotel California. Recognizing the importance of presenting this oft-reissued longtime audiophile favorite in spectacular sound, this numbered-edition disc plays with alluring clarity, organic richness, tube-like warmth, massive dynamics, and copious detail. You’ll be able to almost smell the colitas and feel the breeze in your hair. Songs feature front-to-back soundstages that allow the music incredible air, roominess, and separation. Indeed, the opportunity to zero in on all the particulars of the Eagles record dubbed “a legitimate rock masterpiece” by vaunted Los Angeles Times scribe Robert Hilburn has never been better. A global phenomenon that marked the band debut of guitarist-singer Joe Walsh, Hotel California continues to resonate and connect with listeners of all generations taken by its narrative depth, stark directness, picturesque melodies, daring majesty, and passionate emotionalism. Adorned with a breathtaking exterior photograph of the Beverly Hills Hotel that serves as the simultaneously haunting and alluring cover art, and rounded out by a rear-cover shot of the Lido Hotel lobby that reinforces a notion that teeters between permanence and transience, Hotel California is brilliantly tied to a specific place that functions as a universally understood metaphor for the American Dream. Confronting the darker undercurrents and oft-ignored constructs attached to that romantic notion, the record’s songs revolve around a host of shared themes: excess, mobility, stability, illusion, fame, destruction, and idealism included. Notably, Hotel California appeared at a crucial junction in American history: During the country’s bicentennial and amid escalating controversies related to the Vietnam War, energy crisis, governmental corruption, and more. That the Eagles manage to channel such cultural, social, and economical matters into a cohesive, stately, big-picture statement is alone a stupendous feat. That the album’s reach, boldness, vitality, accessibility, and understated intensity have never waned make it a marvel. Reflecting on Hotel California 40 years after its original release, and indirectly explaining its enduring appeal and increasing relevance, singer-songwriter Don Henley confirmed the record pertains to the “loss of innocence, the cost of naiveté…the difficulties of balancing loving relationships and work, trying to square the conflicting relationship between business and art; the corruption in politics, the fading away of the Sixties dream of ‘peace, love and understanding.'” It can be argued that Henley and company squarely hit on and drive home those ideas in the surreal title track, chart-topping “Life in the Fast Lane,” and grand “The Last Resort” alone. But that would miss the forest for the trees. Experienced as an unbroken whole, complete with the pristinely shot imagery and physical grooves, Hotel California unfolds like a geography-conscious saga by James Michener and plays like color-saturated movie shot on widescreen 70mm film by Martin Scorcese about our collective and individual decisions and shape of our past, present, and future. And, just like that conjured by our imaginations, Hotel California continues to take on a life of its own.

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Title: Eagles – Eagles (1972) [MFSL 2021]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Originally released in June 1972, the Eagles’ self-titled debut played a significant role in changing the face of mainstream music while setting up a dominant run that’s continued for nearly five decades. Produced by Glyn Johns, and home to three massive hits, Eagles established a cleverly restrained, Los Angeles-bred style that would sweep the country and position the group as superstars. Mastered from the original analog master tapes, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition hybrid SACD pays tribute to the record’s merit and enhances the intimate program for generations to come. Playing with reference sonics that elevate an effort forever prized by audiophiles, this spectacular version provides a clear, clean, transparent, balanced, and intimate view of an album that permanently made California-style rock a style of its own.

Visually, the front cover of the album brilliantly captures the fundamentals of the Eagles’ aural essence. Photographed at Joshua Tree National Park, it portrays a seemingly endless blue sky arched over the hovering copper glow of a sunset. In the foreground, shadow-bathed cacti hugs a slice of desert, both illuminated by nature above and beyond. Peaceful, easy, breezy, organic, laidback, cohesive, warm yet cool: The picture parallels the tone and timbre of the content lurking in the songs, and helps elevate Eagles to that rare place where every single aspect (and participant) is united in theme and purpose. As just one of two Eagles albums created by the original quartet of Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Randy Meisner, and Bernie Leadon, the record remains unique in the band’s history for the shared songwriting and vocal performances. Each member takes the lead on at least one track, extending to Meisner on “Most of Us Are Sad,” “Take the Devil,” and “Tryin'” as well as Leadon on “Train Leaves Here This Morning” and “Earlybird.” The mellifluous blending of the Eagles’ distinctive voices, the very aspect that drew Johns to the project, lingers throughout. Such harmonizing – in combination with textured sonic tapestries stitched with acoustic guitars, steady bass lines, banjo notes, folk constructs, and edgy rock elements – informs arrangements bolstered by golden melodies and brilliant craftsmanship. Nowhere is that approach more evident than on “Take It Easy,” an opening tune that quickly became a signpost of the collective’s mentality, technique, and philosophy. Rambling, and related themes of traveling or returning home, resurface in “Train Leaves Here This Morning” and the restless “Take the Devil.” Women, another of the Eagles’ other long-running inspirations, occupies much of the album’s other focus. Frey’s opportunistic “Chug All Night,” the Top 25 smash “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” and Jackson Browne’s devotional “Nightingale” continue the light-streaked vibes. In contrast, Henley’s cautionary “Witchy Woman” portends the darker concepts the band would explore going forward even as the song maintains a voodoo-kissed, feel-good mood. Indeed, few albums of the era felt better in both scope and spirit.

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