THE TRUTH is you could put the sum of my knowledge of CSN severally
and separately on your thumbnail and still have room for a game of snooker. I mean until I
did some research I thought Buffalo Springfield was Dusty's half-breed brother. But in
some cases ignorance can be an advantage. No preconceptions, no rooted prejudices. I
vaguely anticipated something wimpy and limpy prattling about San Francisco and love and
peace man. Finding that to be completely wrong it was no great effort to defy the current
fashion and enjoy an excellent album. I suppose you'd have to allow it is 'soft' rock in
the sense that it's mainly acoustic and harmonic yet that's anything but the whole story.
There's no brewer's or herbal droop of the brain. Their themes are a
personal identity crisis ('I'd like to meet you, who do you see?/lntroduce yourself to
whichever of me/ls nearby') and a philosophical questioning which continually spars with
religious metaphors of the 'captain' and the leader while posing an alternative answer in
the love of a woman (if only it would work out which it never seems to for them). Well it
sounds better in song I assure you.
Those famous vocal harmonies rarely come across as just creamy and
slick. There's a desolation about them like a beautiful statue left in the desert with
nobody to look at it. I think that feeling relates to their own awareness of how they have
become alienated from all but their most faithful followers: 'Ten years singing right out
loud/ l never looked was anybody listening./ Then I fell out of a cloud/ Hit the ground
and noticed something missing' (from Stills' 'See The Changes'). If you played it in the
background and got distracted into conversation you'd probably think "Oh yes nice
enough" when you noticed the centre groove bumping. If you actually listen there are
only a couple of tracks less than engrossing (Stills' 'Fair Game' and Nash's 'Just A Song
Before I Go').
So 'CSN' is soft and tough. The instrumental arrangements could hardly
have been bettered, reserved and spare exactly where you might have expected them to be
lush. Stills plays acoustic and electric guitars with perfect economy, the antithesis of
the ego-tripper, and Joe Vitale matches him on drums.
'Cathedral', 'Dark Star', 'Cold Rain' and 'In My Dreams' are all
skintight songs, questioning, but personal and without pretension. Maybe the highlight is
Crosby's 'Anything At All' which hints at sleazy cabaret mocking the star as all-purpose
pundit: 'Anything you want to know, just ask me/ I'm the world's most opinionated man'.
It strikes me they're completely outflanked their
critics.
