Crosby & Nash
Graham Nash David Crosby

This album was born when the era of the supergroup CS&N (&Y) came to a temporary halt, which happened in 1972 after the release of an excellent live album that seemed to mark the end of what once appeared to be a spontaneous, albeit brilliant, artistic consortium. To make a long story short, Young is a lone wolf by nature, while Stephen Stills' court would regularly attract his "usual" great session men, "man-of-many-tastes" Chris Hillman, and they would almost manage to tempt Bill Wyman for the Manassas project.

David Crosby and Graham Nash, on the other hand, chose to continue the journey together and released their debut as a duo. It's not a very successful album, and to fans of the legendary collective, this work will seem almost like a half disappointment. Aside from Young, it's the absence of Texas cowboy Stephen Stills that weighs heavily, both musically and compositionally. Of that celebrated trio, in fact, David and Graham represented the most stylistically opposed souls, the antipodes, namely hippie psychedelia and the "post-powerpop fringe". Thus the void, the absence of Stills seems imminent, capable with his instrument and magical pen of serving as a link between the two heterogeneous if not antithetical composers, even though they were great friends, and of holding both with tightly tuned sound reins, managing to frame the production of the two companions within a perimeter of Californian and/or Western music.

As two counterparts without a mediator and moderator, the distance between the suggestions arising from Nash's and Crosby's songs seems unable to find a connection between them. And so one is forced (always and still almost pleasantly) to move from a true British march to a lysergic watercolor. This is the case right from the start: the Americanized powerpop of "South Bound Train" poorly mixes with the very stretched lysergic jazz blues of the following "Whole Cloth". Nash's infinite sweetness in the little gem "Blocknotes" and in "Strangers Room" seems to clash with the meditative and even exaggeratedly dreamy folk of "Where Will I Be?" from the forgetful mustachioed Los Angelino.

Mind you, there are definitely good pieces, and the sweet-talking poor man's dandy always manages to make us songwriters happy, starting with the bouncy "Frozen Smiles". Graham's seem, once again, like little songs that you might later discover to be great songs, while for almost the entire album it seems like the former Byrds member is lacking, at least until "Games" arrives, where he finds his mood and best expression. Here's where Crosby redeems himself greatly with the delightful blues ballad "Girl To Be On My Mind", warm caramel that drips on you, and with the desert-like, sweaty, thirsty, dehydrated, Stills-like, "The Wall Song", and peyote once again has an artistic reason to be consumed.

Nash holds up his partner's level and places the concluding "Immigrant Man": Nashian rock is always an unusual commodity, with sound and emotional impact always lower than that of pure rockers, but in this episode, Nash delivers appropriately, thanks to an intriguing framework and the contribution of Crosby, who adds a skillful jingle jangle, stuff he seems well-trained for.

An album made of beautiful songs but of inferior caliber to what was in the very recent past, a half-unresolved and disconnected work, defects that the two later demonstrate (belatedly) they can remedy by coming together, in the nearly successful (belatedly) attempt to bridge the stylistic and atmospheric gap between them. Even a sonic void, which the two will try to fill by drawing on their experience, unable to resort to friends-intermediaries.

The result is what it is, but it is encouraging for future attempts. In fact, the two will continue to record together, with or without Stills and Young. It's just that, in the immediate future, David Crosby (and the other David, Geffen) will want something more than the remnants of a supergroup. Something more ambitious.

The Byrds, in short, will try to fly together again. Belatedly.