Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young – Looking Forward Review

Anything improving on American Dream, more a brush with sleep paralysis than an experience of sleepy fantasy, would be welcomed. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young are a supergroup whose debut album proved to be an overly popular release with a few solid songs. What made the group so great in those early days was their independence. What made both American Dream and Looking Forward so horrific is their independence also. Where the energy and excitement of the group on their Deja Vu record is palpable, it soon turned into ugly words and even uglier work. Looking Forward gives the band a chance to bury the hatchet and move on as an outfit of that same incredible potential they showed in the 1970s. Young joined the sessions for Looking Forward with the same interest dogs have in their own reflection. Three songs from Young, the rest from Crosby, Stills and Nash on what marks their last-ever album. 

Considering the sheer volume of artists continuing to make music for the sake of it, a shake-up from Young joining the sessions should have been a re-energising factor. It was not. The band sounds unable to shift from an entitled sense of songwriting, each a barbed and pathetic callback to their popular works from twenty years ago. Looking Forward is truly unlike anything else the supergroup has written. It exceeds the awfulness of American Dream because this amalgamation of shoddy genre trips is a soft rock embarrassment. No wonder Atlantic Records had no interest in the group when this is what they were offering. How bad this could have gotten without Young is too horrifying to think about. Opener Faith in Me is easy to write off, its questionable instrumental line through, and the soft reggae style does not work for the country and folk-rock stars. Songs of faith and love with overly soppy soft rock tones. A truly miserable time for those who want some earnestness in those hollow, heartfelt showcases. 

“Writing a song won’t take very long,” is the ambitious sound of the title track. Perhaps they should have taken longer to assemble Looking Forward. Very primitive writing, as was the case for many releases from Young around this time and the decade preceding this surprise Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young reunion. This is not easy listening, though. There is nothing easy about Looking Forward, an album so devoid of quality, of the expected vibe and tone of the legendary quartet, you would be better off listening to the sizzle of your radio being thrown in the bathtub. Leftovers from their American Dream appeal can be heard on Heartland, an easy-going snooze, which is well behind the soft rock times. Their contemporaries were creating the likes of Flaming Pie and Time Out of Mind. Looking Forward is an awkward third album that was doomed with or without Young joining in. 

The most passive album in any of the four men’s discography, and that includes the tiresome Everybody’s Rockin’. No Tears Left is the sole standout of this quiet album, a piece which never leans into the rocking efforts of any of its performers. There is plenty of talent in the studio, though it sounds as though immovable partitions were set up to keep the supergroup from tearing the throats out of each other. Even the Young pieces, written for solo purposes but thrown onto Looking Forward, are pale imitations of the former studio powerhouse. An utterly flat piece of work devoid of the charm of the original or the surprise of their doomed follow-up. Looking Forward does look forward, not because the future holds exciting experiences, but because it is far away from this messy, middle-of-the-road release.