Hawks & Doves (1980)

Hawks & Doves (1980)

Like Rust Never Sleeps and American Stars & Bars before it, Hawks & Doves is an album that uses the two sides of an LP to showcase two different sides of our ever-eclectic hero. Unlike those previous two entries, however, the grab-bag approach of Hawks & Doves doesn’t make for an easy listen. Side one, mostly made up of seemingly incompatible flotsam from the aborted Homegrown album, features at least one winner in the form of the quixotic “The Old Homestead,” while the intriguing-but-overrated “Captain Kennedy” provides another minor highlight. The album was released on November 3rd, 1980; the following day, Ronald Reagan would be elected President of the United States, and Hawks & Doves’ thorny, cranky second side of down-home heartland horseshit portends all kinds of doom by association.