Sunday, September 15, 2019

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Back Home - Non-Album Tracks (2009-2014)

In late 2015, Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN) broke up. As i write this in 2019, it seems probable that CSN will never make music again, which is a big shame. CSN hadn't put out a studio album since 1999 (with Neil Young). But it's not for a lack of good songs. In the years right before they broke up, they had a real creative renaissance. That's so much the case that I was able to fill up two albums with stray tracks. This is the first of those two.

In 2003, David Crosby and Graham Nash released an album together, and Stephen Stills put out an album in 2004. After that, all three of them were mostly silent for about a decade. CSN made an effort to record an album around 2009 and 2010, but it was going to be an album of all covers. That made it seem that their songwriting had all but petered out. And it does seem that they did write very few songs for most of those years.

But around 2012, it seems that Crosby and Nash in particular got busy writing songs again, and very good songs. Both of them have been on a streak ever since, especially Crosby, who has put out a surprising number of good solo albums in recent years. Stills spent a lot of time with his new band with Kenny Wayne Shepherd, called the Rides. He didn't write many songs, but the few he did write were pretty good.

The songs come from a variety of sources. There were three new songs on a CSN live album from 2012, so I've included those. I've also included the three best songs from Crosby's 2014 solo album, called "Croz." The rest are from various sources, including some unreleased versions of songs played in concert.

The sound quality is generally excellent, including for the unreleased songs. One partial exception is "I'm Here for You," which sounds a bit echoy. But it was good enough to my ears to include.

If you're under the impression that CSN were washed up after the 1960s and 1970s, you should give this a listen. They did go downhill in terms of their career due to bad production, being way out of step with musical trends, ego clashes, and so on, but they never lost their talent for songwriting.

01 Almost Gone [The Ballad of Bradley Manning] (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
02 Radio (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
03 Wrong Thing to Do (Stephen Stills)
04 Exit Zero (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 Time I Have (David Crosby)
06 In Your Name (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
07 Set that Baggage Down (David Crosby)
08 Low Barefoot Tolerance (Stephen Stills)
09 I'm Here for You (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
10 What's Broken (David Crosby)
11 Can't Get Enough (Stephen Stills & the Rides)
12 Back Home (Graham Nash)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16408058/CROSBSTLLSNSH2014BckHme_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used an outtake for the cover for CSN's 2012 live album, simply called "CSN 2012." It's very similar to the cover for that album, but I don't mind because it seems very few people got that album. I found the lettering for the band's name from a CSN T-shirt.

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