By 1985, Joe Walsh had already burned through arenas, addictions, and more amps than most guitarists dream of touching. So The Confessor doesn’t strut into the room—it limps in, haunted and unshaven, with one hand on the fretboard and the other in the ashtray. It’s not a comeback; it’s a confession booth wired to a Marshall stack.
The album opens with “Rosewood Bitters,” an elegiac sigh—a re-recording of Michael Stanley’s tune that fits Walsh like a well-worn denim jacket. It sets the tone: bittersweet, reflective, soaked in slide guitar and twilight regret. But then the real sermon begins.
The title track, “The Confessor,” is epic—nearly eight minutes of slow-burning mysticism and molten guitar work. It moves like a pilgrimage across scorched earth: quiet, meditative verses that burst into fiery solos like spiritual exorcisms. Walsh’s voice wavers with weariness and hard-earned wisdom. He isn’t preaching—he’s bleeding truths we didn’t ask for but maybe needed.
Elsewhere, the tone lightens but the shadows remain. “Slow Dancing” is a low-key groove with a lonely saxophone curling through it like cigarette smoke in a late-night diner. “Good Man Down” and “Tell Me Why” throw punches at the world with barroom swagger and just enough polish to sneak onto FM radio.
This is a Reagan-era rock record caught between cynicism and sincerity. Walsh’s trademark humor peeks out—see “Lucky That Way” or the slyly funky “Sightseeing”—but it’s more reserved, like the laughter of someone who's seen too much and still shows up to play.
The production is warm and analog, like whiskey in a wood-paneled room. It’s not chasing trends; it’s aging through them. Synths show up, but they don’t steal the spotlight—this is still Joe’s guitar record, full of gritty bends, echoing slide, and that classic Walsh tone: half sarcasm, half salvation.
The Confessor isn’t trying to be a hit. It’s a weathered prayer, a desert blues-rock journal from a man who survived the circus and stuck around to tell the tale.
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