Music
Crosby, Stills & Nash
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Rob Adams
FIVE STARS
In David Crosby’s assessment, the band members’ contributions are: Stephen Stills writes great rock songs; Graham Nash writes anthems that the world wants to sing; and Crosby writes “the weird shit”. There’s a bit more than this to their respective outputs and certainly after this latest instalment of the CS&N story, we need to acknowledge Crosby’s creations as “the gloriously weird shit”.
CS&N 2015 has nothing to do with old rock codgers sallying forth to top up their pensions. Far from it. They have a reputation to uphold and - now all in their seventies - they’re not just maintaining it, they’re enhancing it, Crosby, who was in magnificent form, especially. The voices may not be quite as lithe, the harmonies not quite as lush as they once were, but the magic these three very distinctive vocal timbres create when they coalesce can still thrill big time.
Much of the music here was drawn from their first two, classic albums and if it sounded reassuringly familiar, with the help of a truly superb five-piece band it also shone with crisp, current arrangements and great presence. Crosby’s Long Time Gone, with its dynamic, staccato instruction to speak out, was one instance. Nash’s cosy but fresh Our House was another and Crosby’s mini rock opera, Déjà Vu, complete with changing tempi, tumbling vocal lines and concise band solos, proved a captivating, masterly epic.
New songs from all three showed they’re still producing high end goods to Crosby’s aforementioned specifications and Stills’ wonderful, soulful soaring on Suite: Judy Blue Eyes proved that even on the encores, these troupers are giving it everything they have.
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