Crosby Stills Nash & Young - D?j? Vu
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CD Details
Artist: Crosby Stills Nash & YoungEdition: Music CD
Format: Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 1994-09-06
Music Label: Atlantic / Wea
Soundtracks:
- Carry On
- Teach Your Children
- Almost Cut My Hair
- Helpless
- Woodstock
- D?j? Vu
- Our House
- 4 + 20
- Country Girl: Whiskey Boot Hill/Down, Down, Down/"Country Girl" (I Think You're Pretty)
- Everybody I Love You
Music reviews of D?j? Vu
Music Review: voices of a unique moment in history
Rating: 5 Stars
From the vantage point of the aughts, it is easier than ever to define the near-magical qualities of this album. It is also easy, at least for me, to face the fact that it is far from perfect. Deja Vu has its fair share of clunkers. CS&N's first album was not perfect either, but it came so close to perfection that criticism would be merely petty. Deja Vu, however, was more of a mixed bag: Teach Your Children is a suprisingly, almost shockingly schlocky top-40 material that seems designed to bridge the ol' generation gap and get the pouty youths and wise papas and mamas to love each other and hug a lot; worse is Our House, Graham's syrupy bid for middle-class pleasures. Carefully crafted with imagery straight from Hallmark cards, it could appeal to pretty much anyone on the planet, especially if they were in the throes of a first "serious" coupling, looking forward to babies and the picket fence. The fact that it was written by someone whose vision of a cozy house was drastically different - several million dollars different - than that of your basic working stiffs, didn't seem to bother anyone, and these sucrose songs were both tremendous radio fodder and huge hits. Graham Nash had a gift for what was essentially teenybopper music, and, in retrospect, one must wonder what attracted the other three to him. Then there's Helpless. I confess I've always disliked this song because it's so awfully simple - the same three chords again and again; it seemed to me that a self-respecting musician shouldn't write something that was no more than a continuous hook. As if to counter this argument, Neil also wrote Country Girl, which is the other extreme: pompous, bloated, so overproduced that it probably made Phil Spector whimper in his dreams. And how about those lyrics: "...no pass out sign on the door set me thinking, are waitresses paying the price for the their winking...?" Yes, Neil, those words rhyme, now stop taking the crystals, you're really losing it. I am not enamored of what the guys did with Mitchell's Woodstock, either: a nice rocker, sure, but the chill that this song carries in Mitchell's ultra-sophisticated version is completely gone. And finally, Everybody I Love You is a mush of sound, a sort of a meaningless good-time improv that musicians of this caliber could probably come up with accidentally at any moment during rehearsals, just goofing around in the studio.
So, with all this, why still 5 stars? Do the few remaining songs really deserve such high praise just for themselves? Yes, they do. They embody qualities that seem to be entirely lost in the way that rock music is written today, whether good or bad. There is the unmatched melodic invention: it is supported by impeccable musicianship, Crosby's unique harmonic gifts, and exceptional vocal harmonies (there, I've killed three adjectives in one sentence, but they're well deserved). Secondly, there is the depth of imagination, and the sheer beauty to which imagery is attached: you don't have hooks per se, you just float along on entire songs that are stuctured so that no section can be separated from the others, even though, interestingly, several songs are put together of different parts composed in different keys or tempos. Thirdly, there is fearless artistic exploration. When did you last hear something so out of left field for its era as these songs were for theirs? Yep, there's Country Girl again: it may have been over the top, but what an experiment! Compare it with the nasally-monotone rubbish of almost anything that hits top 40 today and find an ounce of the same originality, introspection, lunacy, or vision. How about the gorgeous weirdness of the song Deja Vu itself, or the straight-out rock of Carry On, or the anthemic (yet not in the least arena-pretentious) Almost Cut My Hair - I have little of said item left, yet whenever I hear the song, I still feel like letting my freak flag fly. You can contrast that with the lesson in meaningful simplicity that is 4+20: a small folk memento that says so much in just two minutes, with one acoustic guitar. And, folks, this was all done, for the most part, with two guitars, a bass, a drum, a keyboard, and just a bit of singing... The harmonica counted as a special effect, as did the echo chamber. It didn't go much farther than that (yes, okay, Neil invited about four philharmonic orchestras to Country Girl).
You think I've run out of cliches, but wait, I have one more: they just don't make them like this anymore. Ten stars wouldn't be enough.
oh, a p.s.: i'm not really concerned with remastering. Some of it is merely expanding the dynamics and compressing them at the tips, meaning that you can get louder without distortion, and a lot of it is plain baloney. I heard the bass clearly on vinyl, the harmonies were clear too, thank you, I have no hearing problem, I'll pay attention to the remastering some other time.
Description of D?j? Vu
Less than a year after the release of CSN's groundbreaking debut, the group returned with Stephen Stills's former Buffalo Springfield cohort/rival Neil Young augmenting the threesome. The result is a less concentrated but more kinetic creation; Young swims through the celestial harmonies of rock's best barbershop trio like a fly in consomm?. While somewhat dated ("Almost Cut My Hair"? Wait a while, David, it'll fall out), Deju Vu is teeming with early '70s FM staples, including "Helpless," "Teach Your Children," and "Our House." --Steven StolderFolk CDs
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