Jimmy Buffett Leads a Bittersweet Conga Line Through a Winsome, Fitting Final Collection, ‘Equal Strain on All Parts’: Album Review
variety.comA.D. Amorosi Across 30 studio albums since 1970, Buffett fueled his scenic songs’ tropical, country-ish lilt with a smart, conversational brand of daylight-noir storytelling.
With the release of “Equal Strain on All Parts,” his last studio album completed before his death in September of this year, it can be said that Buffett continued to write and sing from the same generous heart and curious mind he had in 1970, and with the same balance of tartness, holy goofiness and astute, picturesque, character-driven narratives that made his finest work ring true.
From its title track’s ruminations on his grandfather’s wise words to an album-closing cover of Bob Dylan’s “Mozambique” (featuring Emmylou Harris), with its “goodbye to sand and sea,” Buffett’s last studio album manages to be deeply elegiac, gorgeously melancholy, and weirdly, wordily sunny all at the same time.
Fans couldn’t have hoped for a more magnificent or fulsome finale. Featuring Buffett’s longtime instrumentalists of renown, the Coral Reefer Band, and guests such as Harris, Angelique Kidjo and Paul McCartney, the singer’s wise and wily party commences with “University of Bourbon Street,” featuring the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
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