[One] feared that time had canceled [Phil Ochs's] art and greeted Chords of Fame with according trepidation. For he was a talking newspaper of sorts. Irreverent and angry, his were the quintessential topical songs, and timeliness was among their chief virtues. Also, one feared, among their chief limitations. Who wants yesterday's papers?

I do, it turns out. And so might you. Mostly because they aren't just yesterday's. Some of the cuts have merely antiquarian interest, but the overwhelming bulk of the album requires no apology….

[There] is an element of tending one's own garden in [the later compositions], but their apparent detachment from the affairs of the world is amply redeemed by the logic of their artistic development. Ochs wasn't an epic poet … but a lyric one. At the same time that Dylan was detailing stanza after stanza of Hattie Carroll's life and death, Ochs was deliberately dealing in fragmented images that suggested rather than insisted.

It was in hints rather than directives that he did his best work. Early, his method showed up in songs like "The Crabs Are Crazy," whose images made the landing of American Marines in Santo Domingo more an assault against nature than a simple political affront. Later on, during the California period, he explored the nexus of politics and personality—defining with his surgical wit the increasing disjunction between his ideology and his affluence. He didn't much like what he saw, but he had the courage to face it in his writing.

That part of Ochs seems slighted in this selection. The bulk of the work is early, and sermonettes like "I'm Going To Say It Now" simply lack staying power. Even the California songs—with the exception of "Crucifixion"—are relatively unadventurous. And "Crucifixion" itself is oddly muted….

[This] collection seems to accept the judgment that Ochs was primarily a songwriter … and a merely "topical" songwriter at that. One can understand the sensitivity that led his brother [the compiler] to leave out Phil's most unsparingly self-critical songs, but the overall effect is skewed toward the treacly rather than the scarifying. Living, Ochs freely chose not to protect himself; it seems pointless for anyone to do it now. We miss the self-described "laughing maniac."

What we get, however, isn't bad, for at least some of the ostensibly topical songs still speak eloquently; in images like the one-legged veterans whistling as they mow their lawns ("The War Is Over") Ochs still illuminates the grimy corners of politics. Indirectly, perhaps, but with a lover's passion.

Finally, it's that emotion that one values in Chords of Fame. Ochs wrote his share of sneering songs, but he was actually quite capable of loving the odd liberal. And the generosity of spirit—the old-fashioned patriotism, if you will—exemplified in this collection is itself a political virtue that is well worth celebrating. The vision of an interlocking self-reliance—of a nation whose people could freely choose to link arms together—informs this record. The gap between that vision and reality sometimes seems unbridgeable, but Ochs managed to fling a strand or two across the chasm.