For his first solo album in 14 years, Graham Nash mines a trio of themes that have sustained a majority of writers throughout history: love, loss, and finality. At 74 years old, the former Hollies singer offers a unique perspective on all three, a view that rarely gets explored by din of the fact that there just aren’t many people his age writing up to the same level of viable music. Young love is a topic that has been covered a million times throughout the years, but what’s it like to discover love anew in the twilight of your life? How, as a person, do you change through the passage of time? How do your desires and goals shift, alter, and morph?
The really interesting thing is that Nash doesn’t seem to have any answers, but instead relishes the questions themselves. On the title track and album opener he acknowledges that he doesn’t know where he’s going in this life anymore, but feels compelled to keep moving forward regardless. He parries each of the larger questions above with a series of questions of his own. “I try to answer all that’s asked/ I try my best to be myself, but wonder who’s behind this mask.”
Alternately on “Myself at Last”, a treacly ballad which he’s publicly dedicated to his new girlfriend, Nash seems plainly overjoyed to have shifted off the road he’d been traveling down into new, exhilarating directions. “It’s so hard to fight the past,” he admits, “but the day that breaks before me may never be surpassed.” Having spent the last decade as the nominal caretaker for the legacy of Crosby, Stills, Nash and sometimes Young, Nash has been mired in the subject his own past, and it sounds like he’s delighted to finally put all of that behind him and instead look forward. “The question haunting me/ Is my future just my past?” The answer on this song at least appears to be a resounding no.
New Music United 