Sky Trails

Description

Sky Trails, David Crosbys third album of original material in four years, continues the fearless folk rock legends unexpected late-period resurgence. Sky Trails features a full band sound that takes Crosby in a new musical direction as the set tilts toward jazz. The album opens with the intoxicating Shes Got To Be Somewhere, which features sturdy horns, bending guitar notes and lilting melodies. Crosby is backed on the album by the Sky Trails musicians, the core of whom are saxophonist Steve Tavaglione, bassist Mai Agan, drummer Steve DiStanislao, and Crosbys son, multi-instrumentalist James Raymond, who also produced the album.

Sky Trails follows 2016s critically acclaimed Lighthouse which was preceded by 2014s Croz, Crosbys first solo album in 20 years. Though Crosby wrote many of the songs for Sky Trails as he was working on Lighthouse, the two are distinctly different projects. Lighthouse was conspicuously and deliberately acoustic, Crosby says. Sky Trails was intended to be a full band record from the start. In addition to the opener and Curved Air, standout tracks include Before Tomorrow Falls On Love, a spare, romantic piano ballad Crosby co-wrote with Michael McDonald, that reveals Crosby to be quite the tender jazz crooner. He and Becca Stevens bring a sweet, ethereal gentleness to the title track, as their voices weave around Tavagliones soprano sax.

As writer/co-writer of eight of the tracks, Crosby deserves the credit for the albums wide-ranging, incisive lyrics that examine the human condition, from our frailty on Here Its Almost Sunset to our greed on the searing Capitol. And of course the album is anchored by Crosbys instantly recognizable iconic vocals, which are by turns biting and soulful and it holds together remarkably well as a cohesive statement about our humanity. The albums lone cover is a stirring version of Amelia, a tune written by Crosbys longtime friend Joni Mitchell and featured on her own jazz-based seminal work, 1976s Hejira.