Maybe it took more than nine months to come up with another batch of first-rate material, or maybe
David Crosby and
Graham Nash were saving their first-rate material for the next
Crosby, Stills & Nash album, but
Whistling Down the Wire, their third and final new studio album as a duo, was a distinctly second-rate effort. As usual,
Crosby's loosely arranged jazz-blues tunes were offset by
Nash's more pop-oriented songs, but this time around neither of them came up with anything memorable.
Crosby seemed most comfortable on his "Dancer," an instrumental, while
Nash expressed himself in poetic metaphors that were difficult to follow. ~ William Ruhlmann