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More than ten years after his debut, Chris Hillman decided to release his first solo album: had he gotten tired of being part of a whole series of mega projects, or fed up with being number two or three in projects born from others' ideas? Either way, it doesn't seem like it was due to that kind of expressive urgency that generally characterizes artists, although this "Slippin' Away" was followed by a second work just the following year. Even when listening to the album, it doesn’t seem that Chris had decided to take such risky stylistic solutions that he couldn't attempt them unless in his own name. In short, either Chris Hillman had just too many songs to publish for the supergroups' albums, where he was allowed to place two or three tracks at most per album, or he was no longer sensitive to the joys of sharing.
Musically, there are no novelties, then, if not at most some details. Hillman confirms all his sensational background of folk and folk rock, country and country rock, psychedelia and beach rock, and more or less all Americana, to then propose quite faithfully his own standards, relocating them in the contemporary key of reading, that is that root-rock in Pacific Coast Beach Rock style like the Eagles. Furthermore, he has an innate predisposition for catchiness and such virtue hasn't gone unnoticed by any of the giants he's worked with or directly composed with, from all the Byrds to Gram Parsons, from Stephen Stills to another Buffalo Springfield, Richie Furay, up to the not yet-formalized Eagles Bernie Leadon. Even in this debut, he remains true to his own tastes (or limits?), and does not manage to surprise the ears of the average Californian beachgoer. As with the episodes of the last supergroup in which he participated, the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, instead of folk, some decent radiofriendly pop was included, which makes everything fluid and ultra-catchy. Apart from "Blue Morning," which seems born from Dylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" and the country standard "Take Me Tp Your Lifeboat," he can't pull himself beyond this pop boundary, even in the mid tempos of Sonora country rock origin, and even less when he intensifies his mood in "Witching Hour".
Parsons-nostalgic ballads, rock with basic plots, playful mid-tempos, and little more: the first step for an author who, to render at his best, whether alone or with others in further supergroups, will soon change his musical approach, taking refuge in pure country, once the great summer of the Eagles sets. And as a country man, as well as a musician no longer rock, he will take further great satisfaction.
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