Customer Reviews

Crosby Nash

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

While nobody was looking, David Crosby and Graham Nash have recorded one of the most powerful, poignant, and musically solid albums of the year. A couple of songs here -- "Lay Me Down" and "Jesus of Rio" -- stand up with the very best work of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, but this album is not a hollow nostalgia exercise by a couple of quaint relics of the Woodstock Nation. Instead, it's a master class in songwriting and performance from two artists who have retained their integrity and commitment to innovation even after decades of being ignored or ridiculed by the mainstream press.Hearing this album in the era of George Bush is like discovering that a wilderness area that was supposed to have been paved over to build another Wal-Mart was somehow spared and is thriving with new life.

The last few CSN/CSNY projects have seemed enervated and oddly plastic, but "Crosby/Nash" charges into new musical territory while retaining the smart soul-searching lyrics, melodic exploration, and exquisite harmonies that made these guys so beloved in the first place. Some of the credit for the freshness of this album belongs to the band, which includes Crosby's astonishingly talented son James Raymond on keyboards, the very fine young guitar player Jeff Pevar (respectively, the R and P of Crosby's underrated band CPR), and under-the-radar guitar genius Dean Parks, who provided the witty, stinging guitar lines on Steely Dan classics like "Haitian Divorce." The presence of drummer Russ Kunkel and bass player Lee Sklar -- the celebrated rhythm section on dozens of albums by the likes of James Taylor and Jackson Browne -- reaffirms a continuity with the duo's earlier work, but even Kunkel and Sklar sound reinvigorated here. This is not your mother's singer-songwriter album, but beefier and more muscular, as befits a funkier age.

"Jesus of Rio," co-written with Pevar, is one of the most moving and majestic performances of Nash's career, featuring an uncredited backing vocal from James Taylor and a luminous Bill Evans-esque solo introduction by Raymond. Like several of the songs on "C/N," its central theme is what Crosby calls, in another song, "quiet grace" -- the redemptive power of love and mindfulness of the small, precious, transitory glories of existence ("for every human is holy to someone") . The prevailing mood of this album -- as expressed in songs like Crosby's "Through Here Quite Often" -- recalls a poem by William Butler Yeats:

My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.

Other strong songs on this album include Marc Cohn's lovely "I Surrender," and Crosby and Raymond's hip and slinky "Luck Dragon," featuring a lyric written at a CSNY end-of-tour party. "Don't Dig Here" and "They Want It All" face corporate greed and environmental squandering head-on, and Nash's "Half Your Angels" is a haunting tribute to the children who died in the Oklahoma City bombing that seems even more resonant in the post-9/11 era.

The album is perhaps one or two songs too long: "Penguin in a Palm Tree" in particular is almost a self-parody of a wealthy rockstar navel gazing in Lahaina, and a couple of other Nash songs seem overly coy and slight. A stunning lyric penned by Crosby in the mid-70s, "Samurai," is sung with admirable power but marred by tight-sounding vocal overdubs. Still, almost all of the tracks here bristle with new power and glow with seasoned wisdom while retaining the core musical values that made these guys the soul and conscience of popular music for 30 years.

What a beautifully recorded and sung album! My God, these guys sound as good as they did back in the seventies! Sure, their voices are a bit lower now and maybe they can't hold the notes quite as long, but this is as excellent a collection as anything else they've done. Kudos to fantastic instumental accompaniment by James Raymond, Dean Parks, Jeff Pevar, Lee Sklar and Russ Kunkel! And the songwriting is consistently powerful as well--"Lay Me Down," "Don't Dig Here," "Jesus Of Rio," "Milky Way Tonight," and "Live On (the Wall) are instant classics. If there's anything to criticize, it's the length of disc two, which is just about 29 minutes long, but, no matter, I would've gladly shelled out the $20 if they'd put the whole thing on one cd. This is definitely one of the year's best releases so far!

I just saw these guys in concert with Stills recently, and let me tell you, these two still sound fantastic! As for their new double cd collection of songs? they're better vocally than I've heard on any previous albums especially Crosby (which is saying alot. These guys have been consistantly good vocally their entire careers. Wish I could say the same for the recent Stills album... ew).
The only real problem I have with this album is the songs that are filler-esque. Most of these come from Nash (Penguin in A Palm Tree and Shining On Your Dreams are prime examples), although Crosby has a few (They Want It All comes to mind specifically... Been Through Here Quite Often is filleresque, yet i find that it has really grown on me... Crosby can really tell a story). Had Nash and CPR compiled their best songs into a condensed album, this album would have easily gotten a five star rating from me. A slightly less expensive album consisting of what i think are choice songs:

1. Lay Me Down
2. Puppeteer
3. Through Here Quite Often
4. I Surrender
5. Luck Dragon
6. Half Your Angels
7. How Does It shine
8. Don't Dig Here
9. Milky Way
10. Michael
11. My Country Tis Of Thee

would have totally ruled. It should also be noted that this album is very mellow. It has a great organic and warm feel. Pevar and Raymond's musicianship and songwriting abilities add a lot to the quality of this album. If you like great harmony, textures and pretty melodies sung by talented vocalists I suggest paying the big bucks for this double disc. I wasn't dissappointed.

If you like singer/songwriter stuff a la Jackson Browne, James Taylor, and of course, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in all its permutations, this album is for you. It really is a CPR (Crosby's solo side band) album with Nash thrown in generously. If you liked the last CPR album "Just like gravity", this is very similar, and just as excelent. CPR members Jeff Pevar and James Raymond (Crosby's supremely talented son) reinvigorate and rejuvenate the Crosby/Nash duo with great playing, singing and songwriting (one reason why this album has no filler at 20 songs). Pevar and Raymond are now (summer 04) touring with CSN to great effect. In short: great playing, singing, beautiful recording. Mention must be made also of the great 70's rhytmn section of Lee Sklar and Russ Kunkel from all those great Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Carole King, Warren Zevon, and Crosby/Nash albums from the 1970's.

Because I know I'm excited, and the last reviewer was SO wrong, I want to be very careful to be calm, here, and avoid any trace of hyperbole.

CROSBY & NASH is the best thing either of those gentlemen has yet produced, separately or in any combination. I speak as an expert on their work and a wannabe musician.

It is impeccable. They've never been in better voice. And James Raymond's songwriting gift and voice are stunning, even in this context. In some places the album had me doing an unconscious Ray Charles imitation: hugging myself, rocking back and forth, eyes shut, grinning like a fool--in other places it produced effects similar to deep meditation--and in others it evoked grief insupportable. It left me with the overall sense that America is still well worth saving, and that we CAN still take it back if we have the heart and guts to try. It ends, magnificently, brilliantly, with the quietest, gentlest, most wistful, poignant, yearning arrangement you've ever heard (by Michael Hedges), just one acoustic guitar and two heartbroken voices, of "My Country T'is Of Thee."

POSTSCRIPT:

Three days ago, as I write this, this album was of tremendous personal help to me, in a time of great trial. Seriously.

At 2 AM, I experienced in my right eye symptoms I've had before, in the other eye. Small transient flashes of white light, flickering just at the edge of vision, for half an hour...followed by a blizzard of small sharp dark black dots, swarming in all directions like gnats. When that happens it means that a tear has occurred in your retina, and if you do not IMMEDIATELY have laser surgery, the retina will detach, leaving you blind in that eye.

The sooner you have the surgery, the better the vision you'll be left with--and I mean, hours count.

So you will understand that as my wife drove me to town, I was scared spitless, witless, zitless and two other things that rhyme. I know exactly how much fun laser eye surgery is--and how chancy the outcome.

All the way in, I listened to CROSBY & NASH. It was the only music I could find in the car (VERY well stocked with CDs) that did not make me want to bite myself on the small of the back and start screaming in Pashtun, which I do not speak. It helped. I can't explain how. It just did.

All the weary way back home again, feeling as though I had dodged a bullet by the grace of God and the hand of a very good surgeon, I listened to Crosby & Nash. Again, it helped.

That's good music.

Anyway, I just wanted to round out my Consumer Report on David Crosby/Graham Nash/James Raymond/Jeff Pevar/Lee Sklar/Russ Kunkel music. It's the balls. Even when you're on the way to have a laser beam fired at your personal eyeballs.

IS there higher praise?

These guys just LOVE making great music for us - and it shows. Listening to this gem of an album reminds me of that quaint, heavenly restaurant with 5 tables that no one knows about. The kind of place that gets better with time -- the one you tell only your best friends about. Quality musicianship is what this album is all about. At this point, Crosby and Nash are simply doing it for the love of it. They certainly have nothing left to prove. The lyrics have depth and each song tells a story that transports you. Just close your eyes and listen to the hauntingly beautiful "Lay Me Down" or step outside on a starry night and play: I can really see the "Milky Way" tonight. Savor it, and tell only your best friends.

I've never bought a Crosby-Stills-Nash-Young-etc. album in my life. Not for not liking them; they were just one of those groups that were sort of ubiquitous and heard on album radio all the time. That's no longer the case, nobody these days knows how to sing, and I've been longing for good old fashioned three and four-part harmony like the people with southern Gospel and bluegrass roots used to do. My musical taste is eclectic, I listen to a great many things I wouldn't buy. Something made me buy this album today, even though it's probably a year old. Why? I heard "Lay Me Down" on KRXO radio's Sunday Morning Over Easy program for the first time this morning, I knew instantly who it was before the announcer even said, and by the end of this song I'd never heard of I was singing along with it. When announcer does tell me the name and where it was from, I'm amazed. I thought it was from a much older album instead of one from last year. Imagine! A brand new song that's done in the style of the old classics. I had to reward that kind of originality! Next thing I knew I'm over to Best Buy paying less than they sell it for here, a double album for a single album price. I listen, and while a little disappointed there wasn't as much harmony as I'd hoped, I'm impressed with what Crosby and Nash have to say, and I'm not selling this one. I'm sharing it with all I know who love harmony and remember CSN.

The boys are back and this time without Stephen Stills, but with all the members of David Crosby's band CPR, which includes his son. You could almost call this album CPR&N. It's been a long time since Crosby and Nash have recorded as a duo. They have their own blend that is for sure, different than CSN or CSNY. While I applaud anything they do with Neil Young; sometimes Stills drags them down. I never use to feel this way. I was a big Stills fan at one time; but Stephen has lost it, especially vocally. This effort between the two of them is the best thing I've heard in years from any combination of CSNY. They showcase what they do best, strong songwriting, especially lyrically and still gorgeous harmony. This includes strong contributions from CPR. I think they needed this to reastablish themselves as relevant artists; and to those that said they had lost it. There is no shortage of material either. There are 20 cuts with no filler. If you have followed these guys at all through the years, pick this one up and you will be in for a real treat.

This cd doesn't break any new musical ground, but it is very pleasant, well crafted music. The quality of the songs range from middling to excellent, and a few songs such as "Lay Me Down" are up there with the best acoustic songs C and N have ever done
as a combination of C, N, CN, CSN, CSNY, or even S and Y (although it's always hard to compare C and N with one of Y's
stature). The harmonies have never been better,
and the musicianship is excellent even though some of the songs are marred by the "sameness" that characterizes a lot of
Nash's music (not taking away anything from his best efforts such as "Teach Your Children" and "Wasted on the Way).

The cd is actually a cd and a half length, so they could have either added a few more songs or pared it down to one long cd. We have
already heard "My Country Tis of Thee" on Crosby's "Oh Yes I Can" cd, so that song is redundant. All in all this is a very
enjoyable cd with the song quality ranging from average
to great (for a few anyway); I would give the cd 3 1/2 stars if there
was a choice in the pulldown.

A quick addition of all the song lengths on this effort will reveal that they could've easily fit on a single, more affordable, compact disc release.

But even that disc would have been greatly improved -- perhaps the first classic from these legends in some time -- had they chosen to leave at least a half-dozen of songs off.

With that said, there are certainly a dozen tracks that are quite nice. Crosby and Nash really shine as they perform many tunes written by others. And Crosby does manage to add one more classic to his repertoire, with the disc-one-ending "How Does It Shine?".

What stands out the most to me, though, is the production on this set. It is outstanding in a way that surpasses the remastered versions of their absolute classics. (Maybe technology isn't so bad, after all.) Even the mediocre songs sound pretty good...compared to the such poorly-produced recent efforts such as CSN&Y's "Looking Forward."

Yes, at times, this is a real car stereo tester...best enjoyed on a leisurely road trip with just enough inclement weather to require the windows to remain up. However, do be prepared to hit that skip button a few times.