★★★★★
The late '60s shift from peace 'n' love to war 'n' hate is generally represented by documents of violence and chaos: Gimme Shelter's grainy soup of gurning Angels or the Qualuude funk fug of There's A Riot Going On. However, for every OD, cudgel and backhander there were a thousand quiet nights of creeping dread: and this is the soundtrack...
- www.mojo4music.com
2010-08-23
★★★★★
Nash's first solo album since the mid-'80s appeared in America last year. Now it gets a belated release here, but only in the upmarket, multi-channel 5:1 DVD-Audio format. Tough shit if you haven't got the hardware because Songs For Survivors far exceeds expectations. The predominantly acoustic songs such as "Dirty Little Secret", "Blizzard Of Lies" and the gorgeous "Come With Me" are better than anything he contributed to CSNY's last lacklustre reunion...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2010-06-19
★★★★★
C1971 In 1971, Graham Nash found himself in reflective mood after his split from Joni Mitchell. His 33-minute solo debut is a sweet, sometimes naïve set, with three songs about Joni (including "Better Days"). There are protest songs ? "Military Madness" and "Chicago" (a plea to Stills and Young to get involved), and the self-effacing country plodder "Man In The Mirror" with Jerry Garcia on pedal steel, and Young on piano...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2009-07-21
★★★★★
So famous is he as a harmony singer?the third voice in the remarkable CSN sound?that it's easy to overlook the full breadth of Graham Nash's achievements as a songwriter. But they are vast, and this set arrives with the revelatory expansiveness that came with George Harrison's All Things Must Pass?a sense of "Wow, we knew this guy was great, but who knew how great...
- www.filter-mag.com
2009-07-17
★★★★★
The title is as phony as the rest of the album, which despite the paid-for goodies--harmony here, intro there, even a song somewhere or other--is a tame collection of reshuffled platitudes. Especially annoying: "Oh! Camil," in which Graham lets us know that he is morally superior to a doubt-ridden Vietnam vet.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Perhaps the most underrated member of CSN&Y; quartet, this 3-CD retrospective spanning 40 years reminds us that Graham Nash's importance and value to that alchemical blending was never so much his writing but his unrivaled ear for harmony. Nash was able to sense out the silver-tinged vocal line that would transform a simple tune into a great song. In The Hollies it was his high-flying vocals which often added a turbo-charged lift to lead vocalist Alan Clarke's straighter pop delivery...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2009-06-12
★★★★★
If you accept Graham Nash on his own terms, which is simply as a nice guy who somehow wound up a musician, then you probably find him to be an agreeable sort. Add a sharp ear for melody, a pleasant voice that tends to grow on you, and a surprisingly restrained and beautiful production, and you have a good sense of what Songs for Beginners is all about.The material, with a few notable exceptions, doesn't vary between any poles of great or terrible...
- www.rollingstone.com
2009-06-08
★★★★★
Songs for Survivors, meant as a companion piece to Songs for Beginners -- which the sixty-year-old Nash made more than thirty years ago -- shows that his clear vocals are unchanged from the Hollies days without a loss of pitch or timbre. The eight well-crafted originals are simultaneously introspective and optimistic, a combination that saves "Lost Another One" (a musing about how many of his contemporaries have recently died) from becoming maudlin or mournful...
- www.rollingstone.com
2009-06-08
Loading...
