Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
When you have packed so much into life as David Crosby, it becomes almost impossible to not do anything well. To expose yourself to everything that life may offer, and even be willing to feel your way in the darkest of places to find parts of your psyche, is to be able to create art that comforts all those that stand by your side or who may listen as the days grow more intense, more personal.
The listener may look solely to the abundance of work he created with Stephen Stills, with Graham Nash, and even Neil Young, with The Byrds, or on his own, the deep reflective thoughts, poetry captured in a voice that is arguably one of the sweetest to have ever graced the airwaves, and they would find contentment, they would explore anger wrapped up in passion, they would encounter a sublime love that cannot be dismissed. However it should also be noted in the works of the turn of the century of the short-lived but ultimately satisfying CPR, there is also revealed a craving for beauty that arguably never found a place to exist in any previous incarnation that held his name so brightly.
Whether this was down to the new lease of life he felt after his much publicised liver transplant or another factor, is up for debate, but what cannot be denied as part of the process of music captured over a four year period is the influence and collaboration of Jeff Pevar and James Raymond, a meeting of more than minds, it perhaps should be seen as a joining of souls, a melding that gave birth to CPR.
This is not to take away anything from the success or impact that David Crosby did before or since, but like Joe Walsh, with the Eagles he is stunning, in his own environment, he is unbeatable.
The reissue of the group’s first outing within the jazz fusion world is not only beautiful to listen to, it is seismic, a mountain not only climbed, but conquered, and across tracks such as One For Every Moment, Somebody Else’s Town, Somehow She Knew, It’s All Coming Back To Me Now and the first track that the trio wrote and performed together, the heart breaking but ultimate dedication to one of their own, Morrison.
CPR is not just an introduction to a great sound, it is the point of being spiritually rich, of allowing your mind to be taken on a journey, and then coming back enlightened, pushed to a new encounter you never knew you needed.
Incredible, beautiful, outstanding; the reissue of CPR’s debut album could not have come at a more fortuitous time.
Ian D. Hall