[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...