#390 David Crosby - If I Could Only Remember My Name

Still part of my lost years year-by-year trawl, this time jumping all the way to 1971. There's a few earlier ones still lined up, but it turns out I've actually heard more of the 60's biguns than I thought.

This is an album where the cover sums it up pretty nicely, all the hippie dippy trippiness implied by Crosby's floating face, all the languid vibe implied by the sunset, and all of the fire implied by the oranges and reds and yellows themselves, decomposed. The latter rears its head in the lurching swagger and drawl of Cowboy Movie and the proto-Zeppelin crawl of What are Their Names.

But the highlights are actually the moments, harmonious in sound and sentiment, that form the album's shimmering backbone, that flicker and stun like a sunset off the sea. The singular highlight is definitely Laughing, which sets a blueprint for the best Yo La Tengo and Songs: Ohia songs to come decades later. It builds on nuanced bass, layered guitars and flowery sentiment, but then cracks open into one of the finest musical moments I've heard in years, as high vocals and high guitars take the song higher and higher. I could listen to the 3:30-4:30 sequence for hours, and practically have, lately.

The rest of the album doesn't quite rise to those transcendental peaks, but it follows the same blueprint: lush, a little ridiculous if you think about it, but sublime if you allow yourself not to. Really quite gorgeous and perfectly executed as an album, with perfect flow and presence.

Other than Laughing, I don't know that it stands out to me. It fades into the background a bit, swooping effortlessly from track to track, from line to line, on the back of perfect harmonies that turn the songs to mush, but I'm not convinced that's such a bad thing. Definitely a find. Maybe I'm just in the right mood, and I suspect it will fall off for me, but my instinct is to set this on the low end of 4.5/5

You might like this if: you have patience enough for a bit of flower child goofiness, and long for harmonies, interlocking guitars, lush production and beauty.