Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, American Dream (1988)

I can’t help assuming these dinosaur rockers, with the possible exception of the recently incarcerated Crosby, were richer than gods, so it’s perplexing to hear them record a transparently pointless paying-the-mortgages record. Usually Young stands out, but this caught him at the absolute nadir of his most somnolent rut; his tunes do sound marginally more awake than the perversely titled Life of the prior year, but that’s an awfully low bar to clear. Crosby, sober but still insufferable, answers the question, What would Jandek sound like if he were auto-tuned, and sucked? on the droning “Compass.” When he turns to politics on “Nighttime for the Generals,” he offers his usual depth of analysis: the CIA, that’s bad. Stills and Nash each turn in a set of lazy-old-men songs, pleasant enough but utterly trifling. I will confess an unexpected semi-friendliness toward Stills’s synth-poppy efforts of the 80s, so concluding with “Night Song” was the right choice. It’s not good, exactly, but the polished sound holds his usual hippie-bloat at bay.

The gross, pandering title and shockingly awful cover art (down to the very font) are somewhat canceled out by the hilarious inside photo of the three blowhards harmonizing, with a bored or disgusted Young sitting on a couch looking like he wants to punch them all. It's better than any of the songs.