• Rating:
The Texan Stephen Stills has always been my favorite of the now-defunct supranational quartet shared with Californian Crosby, Englishman Nash, and Canadian Young. In my opinion, considering them in order of preference, I would gladly rewrite their acronym as SCY&N.
And among the roughly fifteen solo albums by our man without the involvement of any of the other three (therefore including, besides the works directly under his name, the sixties "Supersession," the two contributions under the Manassas moniker, the other two more recent ones known as Rides, and also the one with his ex-girlfriend Judy Collins), this is the best.
The menu is as varied as ever; Stills has always been a guarantee in this. It ranges from country to rhythm&blues, from rock to salsa, from reggae to blues. There are episodes with only the acoustic guitar accompanying, others with the opposite featuring a rich and resonant brass section, or distorted and searing guitars. Illustrious guests make an appearance (Eric Clapton, Jerry Garcia, Billy Preston…), but the "muddy" singing and the very personal guitar style of the owner, whether acoustic or electric, stand out with personality.
The album's atmosphere is peculiar: it reflects the disordered moment in the life of the singer, guitarist, and author from Dallas, out of his mind as his habit due to the end of yet another romantic adventure (with colleague Rita Coolidge, for the record), thus given to the bottle and unhealthy indulgences.
His discomfort as an unstable and extremely passionate man disguises itself in a super productivity that leads him to begin work on this album while his previous solo debut, "Stephen Stills," had barely reached the stores. The urgency is such that the desire to pour into lyrics what is running through his mind forces himself and his collaborators into endless sleepless nights, buried inside a Florida studio, away from the chaos of Los Angeles, pernicious women, and toxic friends.
The record is, therefore, blood-pumping, intense, almost violent if compared to the polished Californian productions, always impeccable but often a tad smooth and harmless. In this work, the sense of urgency and venting invigorates the music and even the sound, full of bass and a "rough" rock atmosphere that won't be heard again in Stills' albums. Blows like on "Relaxing Town," or in the impetuous crescendo of "Fishes and Scorpions," are worthy of far different rock cultures compared to the more typical adoptive, serene California, and here comes out the "southern" soul of good Stephen, certainly far from the psychedelic, smoked, and hippy tastes of his friends and colleagues from San Francisco and L.A.
This is why I put this second solo work by Stills above all his others. Great songs, besides those already mentioned, are the opening "Change Partners," a single of decent success, the powerful rhythm&blues "Sugar Baby," the brassy and almost gospel "Open Secret" which extends with a ramshackle piano solo over percussion, surely the work of the same (out-of-tune) Stills, the intimate "Singin' Call," the concession to the still recent past "Bluebird Revisited."
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