David Crosby: Lighthouse
So CSN is dead. Mourn if you like, but David Crosby won’t be joining you. He’s over it, he’s moved on, and he’s in a good place. So good that he’s just released what might be his most fulfilling solo album since his first, 1971’s If I Could Only Remember My Name. That one, of course, was made by a much younger man living in a different time. Crosby—now sober, clear-headed and, from what he’s been saying in public, just so touched to be alive and productive—is only interested in going forward. Toward that end, he’s teamed here with Michael League, bassist and nominal leader of Snarky Puppy, a contemporary jazz-rooted band that Croz has been talking up for the past couple of years. It’s a union that actually makes plenty of sense: Crosby’s a lifelong jazz fan and he’s always incorporated jazzy chording into his compositions. But despite the presence of League and other jazz players among the personnel, Lighthouse is largely filled with stark, direct tunes. The singer—whose voice is as golden as ever—places the words and guitar up front, which is all the better because these songs demand close scrutiny. Most, like “Drive Out to the Desert” and “Paint You a Picture,” are minimally populated vocally and instrumentally. Others, among them the silky “Look in Their Eyes” and “The City,”with its familiar harmony blend, open up other vistas, and the closing “By the Light of Common Day,” with its sage wisdom (“You have to go faithfully each day, and open up your head some way, somehow”), co-sung with Becca Stevens, is a parting message that will leave you as content as the man singing it.