JD Souther – Natural History – (eOne Music)

Any history of the 70′s and 80′s now-classic Southern California country-rock scene would be incomplete without the inclusion of influential singer and songwriter J.D. Souther.

After co-writing songs like “Best of My Love,” “Heartache Tonight,” “Victim of Love,” and “New Kid in Town” for the Eagles, “Prisoner In Disguise” and “Faithless Love” for Linda Ronstadt and his own Top 10 pop hit “You’re Only Lonely”, Souther decided after the release of 1984’s Home By Dawn to leave the studio and concert stage behind, but continued his musical career by writing songs for artists like Crosby, Stills & Nash, Joe Cocker, Brian Wilson and Warren Zevon. He returned to recording his own songs in 2008 with the well-received If the World Was You, a critically praised album that took his country-tinged folk/rock into broader stylistic territory.

Souther is in a retrospective mood here as he looks back at his long and formidable career, putting a new spin on some his old favorites. But this is not a greatest hits album — far from it.  Like Souther himself, the album is not a relic or a remnant.  It’s a treasure.

He calls these tunes “hits that other people had with songs I wrote,” but the music collected on this disc prove that these songs are very much his own.