Wind on the Water, David Crosby and Graham Nash

ABC ABCD-902

Author: Stephen Holden
Journal: Rolling Stone
Date: December 4th, 1975

Crosby & Nash's first album together in more than three years represents their best studio work since CSN&Y's Deja Vu. While it exhibited a refreshing spareness of texture, Crosby & Nash's other dual effort suffered from a lack of strong material, with the notable exception of Nash's haunting "Southbound Train." Crosby's and Nash's solo albums have also emphasized each artist's weaknesses - in Crosby's case, spiritless lack of direction; in Nash's, simplicity verging on the simplistic. Though neither artist can be counted a great writer or singer, together on Wind on the Water their strengths are abundantly in evidence. An impressive coproduction, Wind features many well-known guest musicians, the most important contributions those of guitarists Danny Kortchmar and David Lindley, keyboardist Craig Doerge and drummer Russ Kunkel.

These talents mesh with astonishing force on the album's rock centerpiece, Nash's "Love Work Out." A harmonized chant, performed in the style of Neil Young's "Ohio," the song concludes with an extended arrangement for four guitars that keeps accumulating intensity before being faded. Two other rockers are Crosby's "Low Down Payment" and Nash's "Take The Money And Run" ...

If Wind on the Water shows Crosby and Nash at the height of their musical powers, it is also suffused with melancholy, resignation, and anger ... Wind on the Water is not an album made by or about kids, but the work of men who face being beached like whales on a sandbar by the youth culture and who are determined to survive. They will.