Rating: 3/5
Review:
Some decent music but poor sound quality
I have mixed feelings about this album. It's good to have a record of David Crosby
playing live in 1970 when (in my view anyway) he was still near the peak of his
songwriting and performing powers. Some
of the music here is great and some isn't, to be honest – and the sound quality
is pretty dreadful.
I think whether you like this or not will depend on how much
you enjoy the sort of long, laid-back, drifting jams which permeate most of
this album. They're very good of their
type (of course they are, it's effectively Crosby and The Grateful Dead); it's the sort of thing I'd have played while
talking with friends late at night in my room at university in the mid-70s,
probably after a non-proprietary cigarette or two. Nowadays I find a little of it goes quite a
long way so although tracks like Laughing are well done, beautiful in places
and quite evocative in their way, I'm not sure how much I'm actually going to
play this in the future.
Part of the problem is the sound quality. I don't know how this recording was made, but
it wasn't overseen by a professional engineer (or no one who was any good,
anyway). The overall sound is very muddy
and indistinct and the balance is all wrong.
The bass is incredibly loud and sharply defined, while the guitar work
is much too far back and the vocals almost inaudibly faint at times. It's really a bit of an insult to both
artists and buyers to put out such a poor piece of sound recording as a normal
CD.
David Crosby is responsible for some of my very favourite
songs ever (including Guinevere and Wooden Ships from CS&N), I like most of
his work very much and I was delighted to see him make a very decent album
recently in Croz. I can't, in all conscience, give this more than 3 stars,
though. The music's OK and probably
merits four stars, but the sound is so poor that overall it's a disappointment.
Crosby fans like me will probably want to have this, but
I can't really recommend it as an album.
No comments:
Post a Comment