After 28 years of waiting, Eagles have returned with their two-disc monolith, but it should’ve stayed at just one.

As is frequently found with double-disc outputs, there are tracks that should’ve simply been shelved, and many of them can be found on the first half of the release. With the second part focussing on the conflicts in Iraq and typically poking fun at themselves and the way the world works with digs at consumerism and indulgent lifestyles, the first seems to – mainly – focus on lamenting on what could’ve been.

Admittedly, the group aren’t exactly in their hedonistic, chainsaw wielding days anymore, but there is a line between wistful thoughts and lacklustre dryness. It’s also a shame that this is evermore apparent when looking at where the split lies. After switching their stance from country rock to straight up rock nearly midway through their early career in the mid 1970’s, it’s almost ironic to find that most of the dead wood here is from their original sound.

That’s not to say it’s all a lost cause on the first half. The near a cappella introduction of No More Walks In The Wood provides a scintillating marker for their return, before How Long brings back the bright and breezy country-rock era of old.

Guilty Of The Crime provides guitar work that ZZ Top carbon-copied for their career, and Do Something is a wonderfully powerful tirade about not being “Ready for the rocking-chair”. In some ways, it’s the mature version of Lostprophets’ Start Something. Glenn Frey’s closer You’re Not Alone shows solid, quiet defiance and talks about friendship over love, which is somewhat of a relief.

The reason is that a good portion of the songwriting covers the aspect of lost love, with an unhealthy mention of “Baby” more times than is required. It disrupts the flow of the album, especially as cringeworthy elements of production are added over the top that leaves a number of tracks languishing like a Tina Turner or Simply Red 1990’s b-side.

Numbers like What Do I Do With My Heart and I Don’t Want To Hear Any More feel like wasteful ballads. You can almost see the dry ice, purple lighting and stools as the originality of this song gathers dust like the anti-millennium bug software does in the corner of a cluttered basement. The near eight-minute trawl that is Waiting In The Weeds restores some dignity, as does the first half of No More Cloudy Days, but it soon becomes lost underneath an ill-fated saxophone solo.

Nothing can really prepare you for the ten-minute title-track on disc two, and as introductions go for any CD, it’s an almighty effort both lyrically and musically. As documentations on culture, propaganda and war are viciously attacked, there’s no hiding the disgust and anger at the current Middle Eastern conflict. It sets the dramatic change in tone for the second half, complete with rousing guitar solos.

Somebody carries on the torch, as the strings are downtuned and Bon Jovi’s career is laid to waste as the foot tapping, passionate disgust continues in a startling manner. The media isn’t allowed to get away without a roasting, as Don Henley and Frey pen a tune that decries that “Journalism (is) dead and gone”, whilst pointing out the boredom of old relationships and the tongue-in-cheek poke at capitalism along the way. It feels like a world away from Simply Red.

There are still the occasional faux pas, as Last Good Time In Town and I Love To Watch A Woman Dance slow things down back to the previous CD, and Centre Of The Universe is still a rather drowsy, lukewarm affair, but Business As Usual’s weary attack at this “Soul sucking world” puts things firmly back on track.

Finishing on It’s Your World Now, the Eagles set off into the sunset after singing out their curtain calls and using the clichéd line of doing it all again if they could. One thing that could be worthy of altering is this album. It seems to suffer from an ability to try and please all concerned rather than cutting to the chase, in a similar way to Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Stadium Arcadium.

Listenable? Yes. Memorable? Not entirely.