Here & Now (2007)

Scan the guests on Here & Now (Smashing Pumpkins' James Iha and Fountains of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger co-produced; Ryan Adams, and members of My Morning Jacket and Nada Surf turn up) and you might imagine the ''Ventura Highway'' riders are in store for some serious rock cred. Well, no. The sound and sentiments are frozen in wimpy Me Decade amber, as if the assisting hepsters approached it as a nostalgic art project. But any fool for mellow gold may fall for a handful of cuts choice enough to recall America's early-'70s heyday, not late-'70s decline.