Buffalo Springfield Again sounds like several remarkable songwriters pushing one band in different directions at once. Stephen Stills, Neil Young and Richie Furay bring distinct melodic and emotional instincts, while the group’s voices and guitars provide a shared identity. Folk rock remains the starting point, but country feeling, studio collage, orchestral colour and harder electric passages continually widen the frame.
“Everydays” suspends Stills’s melody over a subdued, jazz-tinged pulse, making quietness feel mysterious rather than soft. Young’s “Expecting to Fly” moves into an orchestral dream where voice and arrangement seem to drift together, far from the sound of a conventional guitar band. “Bluebird” begins from Stills’s acoustic picking and expands through electric exchanges, rhythmic turns and harmonies that keep changing the song’s scale. Furay’s writing brings another kind of openness, helping the album avoid becoming a simple contest between its two best-known figures. The finale, “Broken Arrow,” assembles contrasting scenes, studio sounds and melodic fragments into a portrait of public image and private uncertainty. Its transitions are part of the meaning: applause, shifting rhythm and sudden changes of perspective refuse the reassurance of a straightforward ending. The album’s diversity is not a lack of focus. It documents a group whose individual imaginations were developing faster than one style could contain.
This edition presents Buffalo Springfield Again on two LPs at 45 RPM. Four sides give its sharply contrasted songs a substantial physical sequence and allow collectors to engage with the album as a complete, deliberately varied statement. It is especially rewarding for listeners following the early writing of Stills, Young and Furay and the meeting point between folk rock and more adventurous studio form. Michael 45 holds the records in Germany and dispatches them from Hilden, so customers can avoid a personal US import and the related customs wait.
Also on SACD: Buffalo Springfield Again
Artist page: The whole Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young family
Customer questions: Atlantic 75: which titles are worth buying? · Buying Analogue Productions records in Europe
Series: Atlantic 75 Series – all 75 albums, time journey and the people behind Atlantic
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.