There’s always been a bemusing disconnect between David Crosby’s art and persona. On record, he often sounds suspended in a haze, caught between folky introspection and steely defiance, but he can come across as cantankerous crank. Recently, he’s been apt to vent his spleen on Twitter, where he maintains one of the best celebrity feeds going, and also in candid interviews where he doesn't hide that he’s feuding with former bandmate Neil Young and is so financially strapped that he’s had to sell his schooner and that he considers purchasing a Tesla an indulgence.
All this turbulence would suggest that Lighthouse, his 2016 record, might be something of a tortured affair, but that’s not the case. Working with Michael League, the leader of the Brooklyn-based jazzy jam outfit Snarky Puppy—an outfit he’s been praising in public since 2014—Crosby abandons the slick professionalism that informed Croz, the 2014 album that saw him reviving his solo career after a 20-year hiatus. This is the first time he’s ever followed an album so quickly—previously, the fastest turnaround was four years, when 1993’s Thousand Roads followed 1989’s Oh Yes I Can—which underscores that Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young now belongs to the history books and Crosby has no reason to pursue any path other than his own.
League decided to use Crosby’s 1971 solo debut If I Could Only Remember My Name as a touchstone, but Lighthouse is by no means a re-creation of past glories. First of all, League dispensed with any hints of elaborate production—there is no percussion, no electric guitars—and yet these hushed acoustic numbers can read as jazz: there’s an elastic sense of time and no adherence to strict strong structure. Lighthouse does share some qualities with If I Could Only Remember My Name, particularly in its expansive and lonely mood. But where the 1971 album seemed to ride a melancholy undercurrent, there’s a certain sense of reassurance to Lighthouse. Older, maybe wiser, Crosby is certainly gentler, letting his songs unfold according to no real sense of time. That’s the clearest sign of League’s influence: he encourages Crosby to indulge in his eccentricities.
Usually, this manifests in songs that don’t follow strict contours. Certainly, verses flow into choruses and there are distinct melodies that provide a path to follow, but the lack of percussion gives the nine songs on Lighthouse a dreamlike feel; it seems as if the songs are unfurling as they’re imagined. Pro that he is, Crosby isn’t free-associating: Each of the songs is carefully constructed, the seams between the verses and choruses apparent upon close listening, as is the understated protest of “Somebody Other Than You” and “Look in Their Eyes.” Nevertheless, the pleasure of Lighthouse is that it’s best appreciated as mood music: with its buoyant acoustic guitars and murmured harmonies, it casts a light spell.
