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Graham Nash has had a dream career in music of sorts.
Beginning with The Hollies, Nash wrote or co-wrote some
of their most enduring hits (“Carrie Ann”, “King Midas in
Reverse”)but when he felt that the band was moving in a
direction he wasn’t interested in, he pulled up stakes and
formed Crosby, Stills and Nash (eventually Crosby, Stills,
Nash and Young but that’s another story)where he immediately
penned hits such as “Our House” (sadly, its classic status
sullied by use in a commercial) among others for the trio.
***
When Stephen Stills took a “hiatus” from CSN, Nash
stuck with David Crosby in the duo of Crosby & Nash recording
a couple of albums, hitting the concert circuit and establishing
his own solo career (where his guitarist would eventually
be Don Felder who became a key member of the Eagles co-writing
the hit “Hotel California” among other songs). ***
Rhino Records has chosen this time to commemorate Nash’s
long musical career with a new 3 disc anthology that includes
key album tracks, singles and rarities. ---
Sound:
Often with these newly remastered CDs I run into issues
with 1) loudness where they upped the volume diminishing
the dynamic range of the music and causing digital distortion
to occur because the music is so loud (that’s what the volume
knob or button and I know how to use it thank you very much).
The good news is that while this is much louder than a CD
released as recently as 1991, it still has a little bit
of head room for dynamics. ***
Compression is another issue (just a reminder compression
when recording can be a GOOD thing but in mastering it’s
a BAD thing in most cases). The music does suffer from some
moderate compression which usually pushes instruments in
the background further up in the mix BUT it also reduces
the sense of depth to the recording. It’s not horrible but
I wish that Rhino would back off completely from doing this
with all their reissues/catalog titles (much less their
new ones). I don’t necessarily expect sonic perfection (asking
for that in today’s world of Loudness Wars seems to be too
much) but I do expect the recording to not sound harsh and
sacrifice warmth from the harsh sheen of digital manipulation.
The set sounds decent.
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