Thirty years ago, four L.A. guys spun out of three
Looking Forward
Reprise, 1999
illustrious Sixties bands -- the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield
and the Hollies -- and, with a name that sounded like a
law firm, achieved sonic immortality. On 1970's Déjà
Vu, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young restructured folk
music to behave with the idiosyncratic freedom of the
most stylish rock of the day, arranged with buckskin
chorales that could move the heart like a George Jones
song.
But Looking Forward, their first album since 1988's
American Dream, seems uninterested in perpetuating
CSNY's status as pop icons. With the exception of three
Neil Young songs that Ben Keith produces with
scrupulous attention to Young's spidery vocals, the
record pursues a happily tossed-off, first-take vibe. The
liner notes, in fact, identify how many takes it took to
record each song: "Faith in Me," Stephen Stills' and Joe
Vitale's slightly Caribbean-ish opener, was a Take One;
"Out of Control," a sublime Young ballad about
emotional confusion, an atypical Take Seventeen.
Because Looking Forward shuns the studio
calculation that often makes for great pop records, the
album seems hesitant. With four strong presences, a
certain schizophrenia usually pervades CSNY records;
where David Crosby and Stills, for example, attempt
political editorials and Graham Nash ponders comfort
and contentment, Young concentrates on the obscure
look in a woman's eyes as she boards a secret plane
to an unmapped country. But Forward features
mysteriously few big harmonies to connect these
different imaginations.
The result is that the listener must truly keep listening --
in which case an album emerges. Highlights include
"No Tears Left," a Stills first-taker with a bluesy bounce
and casually fancy arrangement; Nash's "Someday
Soon," a calm yet spry ballad about optimism that is
sweetness itself; "Queen of Them All," Young's
embrace of the feminine, done in a goofy rock voice;
and Crosby's "Dream for Him," a piece of rock jazziness
that he beautifully controls with his billowy voice.
Then there's the other sublime Young ballad, the title
track. Young sings about something he can't quite
explain to a woman, something crucial about emotions
and the speed at which they change. It's an example of
the easygoing drift of this often excellent yet muted
album: "I'm not waiting for times to change," Young
sings. "I want to live like a free-roamin' soul." For
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, that's looking forward.
(RS 825)
JAMES HUNTER