Crosby, Stills and Nash
Daylight Again

*NOTE: This record was not noisy enough to rate our M-- to EX++ grade, but it's not quite up to our standards for Mint Minus Minus either. If you're looking for quiet vinyl, this is probably not the best copy for you.

This vintage Atlantic pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records cannot even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to "see" the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It's what vintage all analog recordings are known for -- this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of Daylight Again Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes as late as in 1982
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

SR Over 2

The record is actually mastered by none other than Mr. MoFi himself, Stan Ricker, at Half-Speed if you can imagine that. I would say this is the best later CSN album there is. Most of the later stuff is poorly recorded and to be avoided -- not only is the sound bad but most of the music is too.

But there may be a good reason for this album having better than usual sound. Steven Barncard, one of my favorite recording engineers, is credited for additional engineering. Maybe he gave these guys some pointers.

And the material on this album is actually quite good. So CSN fans, this one's for you!

What We're Listening For On Daylight Again

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren't "back there" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
• The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight punchy bass -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of later pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic that is a key part of the appeal of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.

Side One

• Turn Your Back On Love
• Wasted On The Way
• Southern Cross
• Into The Darkness
• Delta

Side Two

• Since I Met You
• Too Much Love To Hide
• Song For Susan
• You Are Alive
• Might As Well Have A Good Time
• Daylight Again

AMG Review

Although Crosby, Stills & Nash had, in effect, been together for well over a decade when Daylight Again (1982) was issued, it was only their third studio long-player of concurrently new material... Among the most notable [songs] are Nash's "Wasted On The Way" -- which was lyrically an ode to the status of the group's union -- and Stills' collaboration with the Curtis Brothers on "Southern Cross." Both were extracted as singles and became among the best-known tracks not only on Daylight Again, but also in the post-'60s CSN canon.

The disc also includes a few thoroughly affective ballads such as "Song for Susan" -- which Nash wrote for his spouse -- and Stills' equally emotive "You Are Alive." By contrast, the album's opener, "Turn Your Back on Love," as well as "Too Much Love to Hide" and "Since I Met You" are all up-tempo, full-throttle rockers co-composed by Stills, and include some of the guitarist's most blistering fretwork under the CSN moniker.