It's been 20 years since
David Crosby released a collection of new songs, but he's hardly been quiet in those two decades. His occasional reunions with
Stephen Stills,
Graham Nash, and sometimes
Neil Young get the most attention, but he also appeared on
David Gilmour's 2006 album
On an Island and, more notably, often worked with his son
James Raymond on a band called CPR.
Raymond is
David's chief collaborator on
Croz, a skillful evocation of
Crosby's early-'70s haze as filtered through early-'90s professionalism. As always,
Crosby is supported by a cast of heavy-hitters, but where 1993's
A Thousand Roads sometimes seemed weighed down by cameos (an emphasis on covers also helped shift the spotlight away from the man at the center),
Croz is tastefully decorated with sly solos by
Mark Knopfler and
Wynton Marsalis, the focus forever remaining on
Croz himself. At the age of 72, his voice remains sweet, sometimes airy, and he and
Raymond take advantage of both qualities, occasionally conjuring ghosts of
CSN's early-'80s soft rock ("Radio" could easily have slipped onto
Daylight Again), but usually allowing the music to amiably drift and linger, sometimes settling in the conscious, sometimes dissipating. Even with songs as spare and haunting as "If She Called" -- nothing more than an electric guitar and voice there --
Croz is too dedicated to tasty, in-the-pocket grooves and cleanly sculpted digital production to truly be an heir to
If I Could Only Remember My Name, but it's the only other solo record of
Crosby's that attempts to reckon with similar emotions and sounds. That
Croz prefers certainty to the untrammeled melancholy of
If I Could Only Remember My Name is a reflection of where he stands in 2014: he's aware he's building upon a past he sometimes pines for, yet he's restless enough to forage ahead into new territory, but only when he's surrounded by cozy, familiar settings. [
Croz was also released on LP.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine