In Brief

In the spirit of the album--Baja is “a great place to slow down,” the liner notes tell us--the world’s sexiest surfer-slash-singer takes it easy, tossing off a few new songs that have that familiar, vaguely noir, island-breezes sound, acknowledging his oft-noted debt to Roy Orbison with a smoldering “Only the Lonely,” even rerecording a few of his own early album tracks. If only every artist sounded so good on his lazy days.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).

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