Crosby Stills & Nash ~ CSN (1977) (Original US}
Crosby Stills & Nash ~ CSN (1977)
Vinyl transfer in 24/96 & 16/44.1 | 1 LP | Artwork
Atlantic ~ SD19104
CSN is a Crosby, Stills & Nash album released in 1977, the third album by the group, and the first without Neil Young since his entry into the band. It peaked at #2 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart; two singles taken from the album, Nash's "Just A Song Before I Go" and Stills' "Fair Game" peaked at #7 and #43 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100.
CONTENT
In the interim since their last studio album of original material (1970's Déjà Vu), Crosby and Nash had recorded three albums as a duo. Stills pursued other projects, including a short career with Manassas and an album and tour with Young.
CSN featured strong writing from all three members, the last time for seventeen years that the band would compose songs and handle vocals without major assistance from outside sources. The production of the album fit in well with the ruling aesthetic of the time as featured in other blockbusters such as the Eagles' Hotel California, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours: well-crafted, melodic songs played with precision and balance, essaying the personal travails of the authors.
Many of Stills' songs on the album echo his marital problems, with "Dark Star" returning to the Latin rhythms he had favored all the way back to his Buffalo Springfield days. Crosby continued the existential probings consistent with much of his past work, and Nash offered both a radio-ready acoustic ballad with "Just a Song Before I Go", and an elaborate set piece re-creating a vision of an LSD experience that he had in Winchester Cathedral with "Cathedral". Many tracks were sweetened with a string section, a first on a CSNY project.
COVER ART
Joel Bernstein photographed the trio in serious poses aboard a boat, and initial copies of CSN bore that picture on the cover. The next picture Bernstein took of Crosby, Stills and Nash was a shot of them breaking into laughter at the thought of just having posed as "serious artists." The trio later decided that they liked the second photo better, and it was decided that all future pressings of CSN should bear the "laughter" photo
REVIEW
Rolling Stone Aug 11, 1977
What's so instantly striking about Crosby, Stills and Nash's CSN, their second group album in eight years, is that it sounds so much like the debut LP even though its makers are so vastly changed. Since CS&N, and later Y, were always at the vanguard of the conspicuous counterculture (always ready to hoist their tie-dyed freak flag at a moment's notice), their current reflection and hesitancy are especially interesting. And, because the music is so eerily familiar, the album communicates a kind of time warp (imagine if we knew in 1969 what we know now) that's compelling and troubling.
Those who have been put off in the past by Graham Nash's moralizing, David Crosby's precious intellectualizing and Stephen Stills' brash solipsism are going to be relieved to find all three musicians dramatically grown up—but not at all smug. Nearly all of the album's material is disconsolate—full of disillusionment and identity confusion—but it's honest and surprisingly humble.
Stephen Stills' songs are the first to strike you this way. Beyond the fact that they are songs, and not the amelodic ramblings he's churned out for the past four years, and that Crosby and Nash's harmonies leaven his slight harshness cleanly and purposefully, Stills' tunes are superbly focused. He apposes the success and failure of a relationship in "Dark Star" and "Run from Tears" without self-pity or pathos. And his "See the Changes," redolent of "Helplessly Hoping" and a lot less pretentious than its title might indicate, is one of CSN's key moments: "It ain't easy rearranging/And it gets harder as you get older."
Graham Nash's political attitudinizing has always struck me as quixotic, but here it's by turns more cosmic and more personal and a great deal more engaging. His "Cathedral" will undoubtedly be perceived by some as the album's centerpiece, and its sprawling dream-time grappling with religion and its powerful musical buildup are superficially impressive. But what CSN is about is the passage of time, and Nash deals with this brilliantly, albeit morosely, in his three other compositions. "Just a Song before I Go" evokes a short-lived relationship not by describing the feelings of the individuals, but by painting the moment of release, without tears. In "Cold Rain," an almost frighteningly dolorous song, he can't comprehend the purpose of the people he watches passing by. And in "Carried Away" he checks adulterous impulses when a couple drifts by "leaving me here." He's unable to seize the moment; it slips by: "Part of me is screaming to say/I want to be carried away."
David Crosby, who is generally less visible here than his partners, is certainly at no less of a loss. His "Shadow Captain," the album's first cut and the one which reminds us how well CS&N blend, struggles to understand "who guides this ship." Ordinarily Crosby is slightly cute about his confusion—he seems to get off on it—and he's that way in "In My Dreams," a song with lines such as "I'd like to see your face alone/I'm hoping there's someone home." But "Shadow Captain"'s conceit—traveling on a vessel guided by a hand whose purposes are incomprehensible—is spun out surely and poetically.
Though CSN's wistfully unhappy tone leaves its music a mite depressing, the fusion of talents is an extremely happy one. Stills' Latin rock breaks up Nash and Crosby's contemplative music without obtruding, and his voice adds a masculinity lacking in the pair's post-CS&N work. Indeed, Stills prevents Crosby and Nash from being cloying, and they restrain his usual stridency. They are not imitating their original sound—all have been through too long an evolution, musically and personally, to be the cute, absurdly optimistic vocal group that arose with the Sixties' slow downshift. They spawned a generation of imitators and admirers—America, Loggins and Messina, even the Grateful Dead for a time—and pretty much shaped the group approach to harmonies in the Seventies. In the end, though, as I think CSN proves, Crosby, Stills and Nash are not about a technique, but about the effect three people have on each other.
TRACKS
Side one
01. Shadow Captain (David Crosby, Craig Doerge)
02. See the Changes (Stephen Stills)
03. Carried Away (Graham Nash)
04. Fair Game (Stephen Stills)
05. Anything at All (David Crosby)
06. Cathedral (Graham Nash)
Side two
07. Dark Star (Stephen Stills)
08. Just A Song Before I Go (Graham Nash)
09. Run from Tears (Stephen Stills)
10. Cold Rain( Graham Nash)
11. In My Dreams (David Crosby)
12. I Give You Give Blind (Stephen Stills)
PERSONNEL
Crosby, Stills & Nash
David Crosby - vocals, guitars, string arrangements
Stephen Stills - vocals, guitars, bass, piano, keyboards, timbales, slide guitar, string arrangements
Graham Nash - vocals, guitar, harmonica, keyboards, string arrangements
Additional personnel
Ray Barretto - percussion, congas
Mike Finnigan - organ, keyboards
Joe Vitale - synthesizer, flute, percussion, drums, keyboards, tympani, vibraphone
Jimmy Haslip - bass on Carried Away
Craig Doerge - piano, keyboards, electric piano, vocals
Tim Drummond - bass on Just A Song Before I Go
Gerald Johnson - bass on Run Fron The Tears
George Perry - bass
Russ Kunkel - percussion, conga, drums
Mike Lewis - arranger, string arrangements
Howard Albert - producer, engineer
Ron Albert - producer, engineer
Steve Gursky - assistant engineer
Joel Bernstein - string arrangements, photography
Gary Burden - art direction, design
EQUIPMENT
-VPI HW-16.5 RCM
-Clearaudio Concept w/ Verify magnetic-bearing tonearm
-ClearAudio Talismann V2 Gold Ebenholz (Ebony)
-Musical Suroundings The Phonomena II preamp
-Zoom H4n
-Audioquest interconnects