Album Review: Sky Trails, David Crosby

“Going jazz” is a precarious notion. Remember how good The Police were? Then Sting gets the saxophone in – and not the cool Clarence Clemons/Bobby Keys kind either. Rather, it was the soprano, favoured by the likes of Kenny G, and Satan. Naturally, the boy Sumner has scarcely made a worthwhile record since. Listen, and sometimes, at night, you can hear him sobbing into a bag of money.

Another, preferable outcome is the path forged by Joni Mitchell through the ’70s. For the most part, Crosby – an associate of Mitchell back in those less enlightened times, when Rolling Stone named her “Old Lady Of The Year” – stays on this side of the jazz fence. If you’re a fan of Hejira and bits of Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, you’ll find plenty to like here, including a beautiful cover of ‘Amelia’.

Opener ‘She’s Got To Be Somewhere’ will have you checking if you’ve put on Steely Dan by mistake; the combination of electric piano and horns should have their lawyers doing the Treasure Of Sierra Madre dance, although it’s more Two Against Nature than Aja.

Of course, you can’t keep an old hippy down. Thus, ‘Capitol’ gives “The Man” a kicking over a good tune, while the excellent ‘Sell Me A Diamond’ starts off with "conflict free stones", before turning the conceit on it’s ear to celebrate moments of kindness. It sounds like awful peace and love muck on paper, but it works.

As far back as 1971’s brilliant If I Could Only Remember My Name, Crosby was stretching out song structures, so this isn’t really new territory for him, although the quality is a surprise. It’s not all great, though; ‘Here It’s Almost Sunset’, for example, is pretty awful. Still, there’s life in the old drug guzzling, organ transplanting, sperm donating walrus yet.

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