Album review : WALTER EGAN – Fascination

Red Steel Music [Release date 05.02.21]

Westcoast/Americana/AOR wizard, Walter Egan is back, with a smoothed out rock’n'roll love story, Fascination, just 2 years after his Burritos’ album, Sound As Ever, created a few fresh waves.

Imbued with bygone vibes, it revisits Egan’s seventies’ albums produced by fellow travellers, Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham, who knew a bit about Westcoast cool.

Lyrically, it documents Egan’s “shared history” with “super groupie”, Pamela DesBarres, and despite the upbeat, string driven tone of the early tracks, ‘Miss Pamela’ and ‘A Fool In Love’, a sense of melancholy seeps into your consciousness as the album unwinds. His seesawing emotional state resonates throughout the tracks that follow, providing little insights into the world of pop culture and music celebrity.

Highlights might be ‘Woo To Woe’, given a surprising emotional weight by a quiet symphony of jangling guitars, and the high, lonesome, McGuinn like sound of ‘Hell I Know It’s Over’, in which a pained Egan accepts the inevitable, “now at last I put her in the past”.

Egan’s pedigree, created when he fell in with the first wave of the Laurel Canyon crowd – Henley, Frey, Browne, Ronstadt, and others – permeates Egan’s music even today. It was no surprise to anyone back then that within two years, he’d signed a six album, worldwide deal with Columbia Records. Buckingham and Nicks teased out the best of him on his Fundamental Roll and Not Shy albums as his solo career took off.

It perhaps should be no surprise that the magic is with him still. ***1/2

Review by Brian McGowan

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections

Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2024 (Singer Songwriter)