Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

CSNY/Deju Vu Live

Warner Bros. Records

Grade: B

Any live music from Neil Young is a welcome thing, but this time it's special. While he's been prolific with his own live releases, CSNY/Deju Vu Live is just the second live album released with those other three guys, coming 37 years after 4 Way Street.

Young says the new album, recorded on the 2006 reunion tour, is the band, warts and all - no overdubs allowed, no studio sweetening.

So you get plenty of gritty guitar interplay between Young and Stephen Stills, the latter having found his stride again with the six-string.

With its antiwar bent, the disc is filled with classics, including Nash's Military Madness as well as a gentle Teach Your Children. The drawback here is that the Living With War tour focused on the songs from Young's album of the same name.

While CSN add a lot of vocal and guitar power to those sometimes-bleak songs, there are curious omissions, such as David Crosby's Long Time Gone.

That song was a highlight of the Red Rocks shows, with Crosby giving new life to lines like "You've got to speak out against the madness."

Equally baffling is the absence of Ohio, another song that has renewed meaning in light of the times.

Still, Buffalo Springfield's For What It's Worth is a welcome addition, with Young re-creating the guitar lines he wrote with Stills back when they were young kids cutting their teeth.

An officially released live CSNY is welcome, but this one cries out for an expanded edition.

Listen in

* Hear a sample from the album Deju Vu Live, by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, at RockyMountainNews.com/extras

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