HORNSBY: OPEN ROADS

“THE WAY IT IS.” Bruce Hornsby & the Range. RCA. The group’s name and some of the song titles set you up for some sort of country-rock or cowpunk variation. This actually sounds closer to what Jackson Browne might be doing if he’d never come under the sway of Bruce Springsteen or politics. Most of the songs evoke broad images of roaming the open roads and desert landscapes while thinking back to the love waiting at home. The music and production (by Hornsby and Elliot Scheiner, with three cuts by Huey Lewis) could use a bit more fire at times and multi-instrumentalist David Mansfield’s distinctive guitar style seems underemployed--all in all, though, an impressive debut.