Present Tense

Songs for old-timers: veteran singer-songwriter mixes anguish and tenderness.

- Terry Staunton

Graham Nash: refusing to mellow with old age

Terry Staunton

Now

BMG 4050538888829 (LP, CD)

Early on Nash’s first album in seven years there’s a song that’s likely to transport longstanding fans back through the decades, triggering thoughts of the singer-songwriter’s fallen comrade David Crosby. A Better Life returns to the terrain of Teach Your Children, the 1970 hit he and Croz recorded with Stephen Stills and Neil Young, its message advocating the passing on of positive vibes to future generations.

The chief difference here, though, is the man who cut his teeth on the harmony pop of The Hollies prior to the beautiful vocal blends of CSN&Y goes it alone for the most part, multi-tracking his sole voice to great effect and without losing any of the songs’ ability to entrance. The exception is Buddy’s Back, a paean to a boyhood rock ‘n’ roll hero, on which he shares the mic with his erstwhile Hollies co-founder Allan Clarke (the song also features on Clarke’s new album, I’ll Never Forget).

Such bygone excursions seem fitting for an artist whose current US tour flies under the banner 60 Years Of Songs And Stories, but as the album’s title suggests there’s more going on here than a nostalgia trip. Two songs in particular, sequenced together, allude to more modern states of affairs that have our Graham gnashing his teeth, as it were.