David Crosby has always been best at what he has always been best at, adding his harmonies to “Mr. Tambourine”, and has he has travelled from the Byrds and beyond his songs have always been good for what they’re good for, rest room breaks during a three hour CSN&Y. Listen to “Triad” or “Guinevere” or anything on If Only I Could Remember, Crosby’s a downbeat junk riddled post-beat psychedelia of intense and immense proportions. It is so uncommercial the question keeps on rising to the surface, not how he managed to survive but how he managed to survive and thrive. You wanna know what Crosby sounds like? Listen to “Almost Cut My Hair” and follow it with “Carry On” and “Teach Your Children” and “Helpless”. Who exactly is listening to it? And why?
Well, that was the question in 1969. In 2014 it makes more sense and listening to Croz is like a miracle of science. Crosby, working with his son, James Raymond,”the son he gave up for adoption in 1962 and co-producer Daniel Garcia and co-writers such as Marcus Eaton and Sterling Price” according to Billboard.
Working in a small studio, without a record label, and with no funding, David got collaborators of the caliber of Mark Knopfler on the terrific “What’s Broken” and Wynton Marsalis on “Hold On To Nothing”, Crosby has managed to produce an album of fair to very good songs with somewhat sodden lyrics and… that production. This is what Rob O’Connor had to say: ” production is horribly slick, stuck in the 80s. The new Iain Matthews album sounds SO much better in terms of a veteran musician proving he still has something to offer.”
Dan Whitley offered the following: “The son plays piano also, obviously great melodic sense from what I saw of his playing and singing, I wanna hear more from that dude, they actually recorded it in his Son’s home studio, pretty cool though I agree with Rob O’Connor , the productions not my cup of tea at all from that tune, personal taste thing,”
I’ll agree with both assessments but only to a degree. After dismissing it as nothing much on Tuesday, by Sunday night I was still listening to it and kicking myself for not getting a ticket to City Winery. Crosby told Billboard “We decided we were making a record, and, God, it’s been the most wonderful experience. I don’t know how we pulled it off, ’cause we don’t have any money. Actually, I do know how we pulled it off; my son has a studio (the Bamboom Room in Altadena, Calif.) he built into his garage, and I would go down and sleep there on his fold-out couch and we would work on it. It took us about two and a half years to do it.”
The thing is, Croz works much better as background music, certainly every time you hear a lyric you will wonder why you’re bothering to listen unless you’re in the market for stuff like “Fear is the antithesis of peace.” It doesn’t pay to think too hard on the mutton headed quasi-hippie weirdness and melancholia.
Once you get past that a handful of songs are worth your time the opener “What’s Broken”, Crosby finally getting his jazz tempos to the right place on “Hold On To Nothing” and the penultimate “Dangerous Night” Lyrically, they are all weak indeed, “I vote for peace and I still get blood” indeed, and the production plods and plods and plods, but they are good songs and you may find yourself returning to them.
Whatever they are, they are a great musician in the twilight of his career with a second wind.
Grade: B+
