The last of
Crosby, Stills & Nash to receive his own multi-disc career retrospective,
Stephen Stills is rewarded for his long wait with
Carry On, the best of these box sets. Spanning four discs -- one CD longer than the either the 2006
David Crosby or 2009
Graham Nash boxes --
Carry On follows a pattern familiar from those
Crosby and
Nash sets, balancing unreleased material with all the big hits, deep cuts, and some alternate mixes, but where this set excels is in painting a full, robust portrait of
Stills as a songwriter, guitarist, and musical wanderer, chronicling his peaks and valleys without lingering too long on the latter. Certainly, what lasts is
Stills' restlessness, how he was grounded in folk -- the first cut here finds a teenage
Stills alone with his acoustic guitar, essaying "Travelin'," not knowing that its restlessness would echo throughout his life -- but also found solace in blues and rock & roll, taking extended guitar sojourns either accompanied by
Neil Young in
Buffalo Springfield or
Jimi Hendrix on his own (the unreleased "No-Name Jam" that pops up on the second disc). Often,
Stills' skills as a guitarist are underappreciated -- a byproduct of being a cornerstone of perhaps the biggest folk-rock trio of its time -- but his virtuosity is present throughout
Carry On, as are his hippie leanings and his almost imperceptible but persistent desire to follow the trends of the time. As the set progresses,
Stills follows almost every production of his time, surrounding himself with funky fusion players in the early '70s and eagerly succumbing to glistening synths in the '80s. His passion for Latin music is accentuated -- it's there as early as "Uno Mundo" in
Buffalo Springfield -- but so is his restless, searching spirit, a hunger that is somewhat dampened by the polished productions of the '80s and '90s, where the sparkle of synthesizers obscures the songs. Nevertheless,
Stills' acceptance of the precision production of the '80s and '90s is an important part of his story, and it's possible to hear this box as a brief unintentional history of his time, as he abandons the earth and dirt of
Buffalo Springfield and early
CSN(&Y) for a slicker, softer sound. But that's part of what makes
Carry On so fascinating: you can hear
Stills slipping into an oddly crowd-pleasing mentality yet he still relies on the folk, blues, and rock that have always anchored him, so he never sounds like he's selling out; he's merely adapting to the times. And by not ignoring these flaws,
Carry On winds up as a rousing, moving testament to a singer/songwriter/guitarist who often doesn't get the credit he's due. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine