King Biscuit Flower Hour

AMG Review of King Biscuit Flower Hour

Bruce Eder
All Music Guide

This April 8, 1989, show caught David Crosby, then a recent drug felon, on the comeback trail, promoting his album Oh Yes I Can. Amazingly, the latter was only his second solo album since departing the Byrds 21 years earlier. Some of the new material is surprisingly similar to the songs on that first solo album -- bluesy, quietly spacy mood pieces, although other songs ("Monkey and the Underdog") are bitterly, vividly autobiographical and confessional. The stuff done with a full band is surprisingly aggressive, in sharp contrast to most of CSN's material. The voice isn't as sweet as it was back in the early '70s -- he has to talk his way through parts of the acoustic stuff, and when he does sing the pitch is sometimes way off -- but Crosby still gives loud, forceful (if not always memorable) accounts of songs like "Déjŕ Vu," "Wooden Ships," "Long Time Gone," and "Almost Cut My Hair" as well as his newer stuff, of which the most powerful song is "Delta." The acoustic set, featuring "Guinnevere" and "Compass," is probably the best part of the concert.