Review: V/A – Music Is Love: A Singer-Songwriters’ Tribute To The Music Of CSN&Y

V/A – Music Is Love: A Singer-Songwriters’ Tribute To The Music Of CSN&Y (Route 61 / Hemifran)

Tribute albums are habitually hit and miss affairs, and “Music Is Love” is no exception, but amongst the two discs and 27 songs there’s an awful lot of good material to be found. Compilers Peter Holmstedt, Ermanno Labianca and Francesco Lucarelli, apart from breaking my spellchecker, have done a very solid job bringing the right artists to the project. There are no dance versions, punkers and metallers are nowhere to be seen and no-one feels the need to rap. Instead it’s mostly Americana types singing songs they either genuinely feel something for or, at the very least, they’re covering artists they’re more than familiar with.

There’s too much here for a track by track breakdown, and not everything works brilliantly, so let’s just mention a few of the tracks that really standout. Ron LaSalle takes on the Stephen Stills, Buffalo Springfield classic “For What It’s Worth” and it’s almost like hearing it for the first time, insofar LaSalle’s organic, earthy performance places it properly within the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter, CSN&Y tradition, rather than a ‘60s best of collection. Steve Wynn’s “Triad” is weird and droney, and utterly wonderful. It makes me want to smoke the vegetation and commit bigamy (again). “Guinnevere” by Bonoff Cowan Szczesniak is just adorable, and absolutely best of all is Carrie Rodriguez’s “Cortez The Killer”. If you only buy one singer-songwriter based CSN&Y tribute album this year, make sure it’s this one.

www.musicislovetribute.com

Tony S.