LOOKING FORWARD
"We don’t need to do it for the
money....the only
reason we do it is because it’s actually a groove to do it." David Crosby
"This album is a transition period of finding each
other....Having Neil back is just so great for me." Stephen Stills
"What happens when the four of us are singing and
playing great, whether it be acoustic or electric, something happens that our audience
recognizes is still with us to this day." Graham Nash
"I don’t think we can ever live up to the myth that
surrounded us in the first place - there’s just no way that any record we can make
now would please everyone." Neil Young
Remarkably, this is only CSNY’s third studio album. Looking
Forward is not an instant classic, but it is a solid set of music, a first step. CSN and
Neil Young were working on albums separately when Neil visited a CSN session to play on an
acoustic Stills song (which is not on the album). He listened to what they had done so far
and was apparently impressed. He decided to join his old partners, offering a selection of
songs he had recorded for his next album. The basic tracks for many of the songs are from
those separate sessions and the production values vary from song to song. Looking Forward
has it’s best moments when they do play together and sing together.
Faith in Me, a Latin influenced Stills song,
makes a weak opener. Perhaps it was intended to remind us of Love the One You’re
With, the opener on the 1974 reunion tour. It is not a bad song, but the mix is muddy and
the performance stiff. Oddly, this song sounds better louder, so the underlying groove
must be good.
Young’s acoustic Looking Forward is one of
the best things on this album. If the whole album was produced with this feel it would be
much better for it. The production is slightly rough around the edges, with a very natural
sound emphasizing Stills and Young’s acoustic guitars and the "air mix"
four part vocals. Looking Forward is an optimistic song, but written in middle age and
seasoned with doubts and lost opportunities ("Thinking about taking chances and
doubts that still linger in the cold"). It has the feel of the CSNY reunion
recordings of 73/74 with a little more huskiness to the voices, especially towards the end
when Stills comes up in the mix. Their voices still sound great together, and this song is
a perfect palette for the group.
Much of the media response to this release has questioned why
Neil would want to work with CSN again. The CSNY performance on Looking Forward shows
why.
Neil’s studio work with CSNY includes great performances of Ohio, Helpless and
Through My Sails. Live recordings (official and otherwise) of On the Way Home, Tell Me
Why, Southern Man, Down By the River, Walk On, Revolution Blues, Human
Highway, New Mama,
Roll Another Number and Don’t Be Denied show that CSNY is one of the best and most
versatile bands Neil was ever part of. Looking Forward is better with CSN than it was on
Neil’s solo tour.
Personally it makes sense that Neil would from time to time want
to return to the "mother ship." They are old friends, a crucial part of his
career. Also, he loves to change things up. And, by this time, performing with CSNY may be
the most unexpected, unpopular thing he can do. That has to appeal to Neil.
Stand and Be Counted is instantly recognizable
as David Crosby. It is a stripped down Crosby blues in the tradition of Long Time
Gone,
Almost Cut My Hair, Cowboy Movie and It’s All Coming Back to Me. Crosby even bothered
to write a gentle bridge to go with the verses and the anthem-like chorus. Lyrically it
feels unpolished, with cumbersome phrases ("Knowing the millennium was just about to
start") that he has trouble fitting in. The performance, and the fun of hearing
Stills & Young play on a piece like this, sells the song. This is a live in the studio
take by CSNY, not an overdub, and you can tell. It will make a strong live
number.
Lately Crosby has enjoyed a return to form and is very much the
artist he was in the "good old days." His recent work with CPR is better than
what he does on Looking Forward (That House, Morrison and It’s All Coming Back in
particular), but this is very good work. This is his best work on a CSN(Y) album since at
least Daylight Again. .
Graham Nash is indestructible. His sense of team play, his
optimism and his voice have all survived the years well. Heartland, like
all his songs on Looking Forward, benefits from his generosity in giving space to his
partners. The chorus is overdone (it sounds like a granola commercial) but the verses have
some nice treats. The second verse is sung with Crosby and reminds just how great Graham
and David sound together. When they sing "such a crazy.....dance" it makes up
for all the excess of the chorus. The bridge and third verse are sung by Stills, with Nash
on harmony. Nash provides the sweetness that Stills voice has lost. Moments like that make
it clear that the combination of these parts is still stronger than the individual pieces.
While Crosby sounds like his old self again, Stephen Stills seems
like a different artist. His voice has changed the most of any of the
group, and all of
Stills’ songs are hard edged, musically and lyrically. While he has always
rocked,
Stills was versatile. He produced reflective, perfectly chiseled lyrics, carefully crafted
tunes and arrangements which could combine power and subtlety (Wooden
Ships, for example).
His voice mixed sandpaper with velvet - smooth whiskey aged in fine oak barrels. It was
fragile, but in the studio he could take a song through it’s paces, running flat out
or handling tricky jumps and hairpin curves with equal grace. His work
here, and on
CSN’s After the Storm (Bad Boyz, It Won’t Go Away) is all bluster -
angry,
finger pointing, blasting. The passion is inspiring. But all the subtlety is
gone. In part
it is the instrument. His always fragile voice has lost it’s smoothness and much of
it’s range. Which is not to say his music here is bad. In fact, much of it is very
good. Seen Enough and No Tears Left are something of an
artistic return to form. But it is in a much more narrow range.
Seen Enough, recorded with Neil, Duck Dunn and
Joe Vitale, is a rant based on Dylan’s classic Subterranean Homesick Blues. Arranged
something like an Elmore James blues, it features Stills on acoustic guitar and Young on
electric slide. Young’s work is a great example of the benefits of Stills and Young
playing together. He steps out of his grunge comfort zone and delivers a convincing blues
slide guitar. Lyrically Stills rails chronologically against everything from the
WWII/Cold
War generation to Internet "geeks," finding praise only for the Woodstock
generation (though they must also be the adults of today who are bashed for avoiding
responsibility). It is a passionate song and a great arrangement, but in the end it is
hard to say what all the passion is about. He seems to be against everyone and
everything.
Slowpoke is another great Neil Young song,
though it feels more like a Young solo with CSN as backup singers than like a CSNY song.
On his recent acoustic tour the opening riff had sounded a lot like Heart of Gold. This
studio version sounds a lot more like Peace of Mind (on Young’s Comes a Time).
Slowpoke features a classic Young line - "when I was faster I was always
behind". The rest of the lyrics are somewhat opaque, but give an impression of
something gained with the losses of age. They could also refer to Neil’s
son, whose
limitations in some areas may bring other gifts ("something’s missing, but
something is found."). In any case, like much of Neil’s work, it is the overall
impression more than the specifics that work lyrically.
Crosby’s Dream for Him is given an
upbeat,
jazzy treatment. In fact, Crosby’s vocal seems to struggle with the speed early
on.
The opening line, "How am I gonna explain it to him," just doesn’t fit the
rhythm of the song. There are the makings of a great song here, though. The subject
matter, a father who wants a dream for his son, is touching. The arrangement
(Stills?) is strong. However, the lyrics again are unpolished. While Neil is
poetic, Crosby is writing
prose here. His words are very literal. Dream for Him loses steam when Crosby’s hopes
for his son turn into yet another rant against lying politicians. He wastes a full verse
on this lyrical side trip. The song ends up being as much about Crosby’s concerns as
it is about his son’s dreams. Crosby has always seemed a bit self obsessed
(his near
brush with a haircut was motivation enough to write a fiery classic). Here it works
against him. Like Stand and Be Counted, Dream for Him seems like a great song that just
needed a bit more work lyrically.
No Tears Left is a great Stills song, his best
since Haven’t We Lost Enough. This track rocks. The take is from 1996, but with
Neil’s overdubbed guitar part and CSNY vocals it sounds like a CSNY
take. The song is
a defense of today’s kids against the preaching of Stills’
generation. Stills
argues for keeping complete control over your own life. He is suspicious of
well-intentioned folks who try to control other people’s lives, which comes off half
admirable and half like an alcoholic rejecting help. Stills’ independence and need
for control have been both his greatest strength and his worst weakness throughout his
career. I hesitate to comment more, though, because in both No Tears Left and Seen Enough
he expresses strong contempt for amateur psychiatrists. Suffice to say that this is the
best Stills has rocked on disc in years.
With Out of Control, Young again takes the tempo
down, this time for a piano based acoustic number. Compared to Neil’s teetering live
solo versions, this one, with Spooner Olham taking over on piano, is more in
control. The
shaky passion of the vocal sells the Out of Control feeling here. When Neil sings
"I’m trying to get through, talking to you, don’t want to
hide," you
can feel the desperation in his voice. CSN provide strong backing vocals on a Young solo
track.
Nash’s Someday Soon features
Graham, Neil
and Stephen on acoustic guitars, with Duck Dunn and Joe Vitale again on bass and drums. It
is a simple song with three verses and a bridge and an upbeat, everything will be all
right message. The success of this take reflects Graham’s generosity and the strength
of CSNY when they really work together. This track has the sound and feel of Neil’s
acoustic songs, with Neil’s guitar right up front. Again we get to hear
Crosby/Nash
and Stills/Nash singing together, with Nash singing harmony on his own song.
Stills/Nash
sound great on the bridge. By really working together, CSNY get a lot out of a very simple
song. Someday Soon has a group feel that it is hard for the overdubbed tracks to match.
The album’s strengths are usually the result of group efforts, even when over dubbed
as on Looking Forward and No Tears Left.
On Queen of Them All we actually get the full
touring band on one song by adding Mike Finnigan on keyboards. Sadly it is for a real
throwaway, a slight mid-tempo rocker by Neil Young which is marred by an irritating
celeste part.
The album closes with Sanibel, an island song
from the pen of Denny Sarokin. It hearkens back to the seventies, when even Neil went
tropical with Hawaiian Sunrise and Evening Coconut. It is a Nash solo recording with CSY
added (Neil even takes a verse). It is a nice, if insubstantial, song and the vocals are
great.
Most reunion albums fail. This one succeeds because it does not
try to copy the past or to avoid it. There is a lot of good material and the magic that
worked in 1969 -1974 is still present. If they keep working together they could move
beyond this first step. A mix including a real Young rocker, an acoustic Stills song, more
Crosby/Nash vocals and more of CSNY together would be great. Forget the myth. These are
four guys who can do great things together. It is nice to hear them try, and mostly
succeed.
Raincheck.
