POP MUSIC REVIEW : Browne Successfully Mixes the Political and the Personal

About 15 years ago, people listened to Jackson Browne’s songs and thought, “That’s what I’m going through in my love life. How did he know?”

These days, you can listen to Browne songs like the 3-year-old “Lives in the Balance” and think, “This could apply to the Iran-Contra scandal and this year’s presidential campaign. How did he know?”

Some have suggested that Browne’s increasingly political stance has hurt his career, which peaked commercially a decade ago. But it’s just as crucial to examine its effect artistically--and if Sunday’s show is any indication, his activism has made him a more valuable artist.

These days, Browne writes of matters on the street as incisively as his earlier work did for matters of the heart. And Sunday at the Shrine Auditorium, on the final night of a five-week tour supporting the fight of the Christic Institute, a public-interest law foundation, to uncover alleged covert U.S. actions in Central America, he showed that he is perfectly capable of mixing both stances: His 90-minute show was overtly political and highly personal, made up half of recent songs, half of tunes dating as far back as “Jamaica Say You Will” and “For Everyman” from his first two albums.

The new songs Browne performed Sunday--including his next album’s title track, “Anything Can Happen,” the tour’s theme song, “The Word Justice,” and the nostalgic “Enough of the Night”--are among his most mature and carefully considered works, but they neatly dovetailed with the earlier, more innocent material to give a real sense of the journey the songwriter and his audience have made during the last two decades.

Throughout that time, Jackson Browne has written about lessons learned and choices made. His show on Sunday was the work of a man who is still learning and still making choices, but who remembers and appreciates every step he has made along the way.