Manassas

After sitting through 72 minutes of Eminem, I get 71 minutes of early-70s country-rock. The first 5 tracks are mediocre blues-rock, followed by a few tracks of mediocre country, then going into a set of pop ballads before going back to the blues-rock style. They don't exactly nail any of these styles, instead doing all of them in such a way that they don't really leave a mark on the listener. Instead, you just get an overlong dad rock record with no real significance at all. Lyrics are just as mediocre as the music itself, so it doesn't even have that. It's just a boring time-waster of a record, despite not being bad per se.

Look, I love Stephen Stills in CSNY where he has C, N, and Y to act as a buffer between his songs—many of which are favorites of mine! I think a double album of just his songwriting is a little too much, especially when none of the songs particularly stand out to me. Was Manassas a skilled band? No doubt. But country rock is already a little outside my interests, and this just doesn't capture my attention the way many records on this list do.

After what felt like an eternity of listening to the first track, i decided to check how long it was. I discovered that i was already listening to track 3. This album felt like a studio jam sesh, but each song felt so much like the same that they blended too well into eachother

Long one, but split into four distinct parts. Side 1 (The Raven) was solid. Blues and rock with some latin rhythm mixed in here and there. Side 2 (The Wilderness) was awful. Country and bluegrass just isn't my thing. Side 3 (Consider) is also pretty good. A lot of smoother light-rock, some experimentation (nice MOOG work). Starting to enter jam-band territory on some tracks but not in a bad way. Side 4 (Rock & Roll Is Here to Stay) starts off with some southern rock then slides FIRMLY into jam-band territory. All-in-all, it's not a bad release and I'd probably listen to it (at least three sides) again, but it's not going to be in my regular rotation.

It's... fine. If it had been a single album, I might have gone to 'a pleasant but not that memorable' three stars but it had no business being this long.

It's time for yet another album from the CSN(Y) verse. The CSN(Y) albums themselves are all pretty good, but I have some mixed mileage with the solo stuff. Let's get the easy one out of the way, I don't really count Neil Young's stuff in this conversation, he has kind of eclipsed all of it. But the other stuff has been pretty decent, but not especially interesting. So I'm not especially enthusiastic to hear Stephen Stills' 71 minute opus. Fascinatingly enough, this album is very transparently trying to reach for a more eclectic, adventurous sound, but does not end up *much* more interesting than the other Stephen Stills album I've listened to. Although, that does imply that this *is* at least a little more interesting, and I'd agree with that. Each side of this album is very rigidly themed and titled. Side A (The Raven) is kind of slightly, vaguely inspired by Latin music. Side B (The Wilderness) is Americana. Side C W(Consider) is slightly experimental, but mostly it just has some synths and a psychedelic vibe. And Side D (Rock & Roll Is Here To Stay) is pretty straightforward, internally consistent rock music. Even if these sides aren't *radically* different, there is enough going on that it makes this a fairly engaging 71 minutes. Side C is probably my least favorite, for as much as it kind of plays itself up to be unexpected and daring, but just kind of ends up feeling whatever; it also has the weakest identity of all the sides. Side A is my second least favorite, it also wears it's identity kind of weakly, but it's songs flow well, and are generally pretty good compositions. Side D is my second favorite, featuring a rock and blues sound that Stills is comfortable in, and a couple of the best songs here, like Blues Man and The Treasure. And Side B is my favorite, Country is another setting that Stills is very comfortable with, and the songs all present a unique take on the genre. Fallen Eagle, Jesus Gave Love Away For Free, and Colarado are all very different, fantastic country songs. The real downsides to the structure here are that Manassas feels a bit bloated, and Stills doesn't really manage to pull it all together into a coherent statement. But there is enough quality here to keep me engaged, and much like the other stuff I have heard from Stills, Manassas ends up fine.

Songs flow well but it's quite a mixed bag of similar country, folk, and blues rock. It's like an amalgamation of all the styles that were really popular in the late sixties and early seventies: CSNY, Buffalo Springfield, CCR, and the like.

I'm at that point in this challenge where I'm noticing how similar a lot of these albums sound. Manassas is an example made worse through it being a double album.

Cool and familiar. Great vibes throughout. Groovy, rocking and melodic.

A sampler of early 70s rock, bit done well

Pretty good, though it feels kinda samey.

Generic 70s hippie mush. Future editions of the book need a reassessment of the ground it covers. As well as the two big groups he was in Stills gets two solo records but the representation of the whole of 70s Jamaican reggae is incredibly sparse. Or you could have a Betty Davis album. Or if you want to be more obvious a later James Brown album. Anything but this poor example of an already well represented genre.

Not for me, I don't like the classic rock sounds, and I really don't like the country and blues stuff.

Mellow folk-rock, with a country twinge. Not much imagination. The musicians are tight but his voice seems to have very little range. All the songs are similar, which makes the double-album length very unnecessary. It probably could have been a three star album if I wasn’t ready for it to be over half way through it.

Like a store bought Victoria sponge cake. Definitely not bad, and sometimes you get a bite with jam and cream and it's really good. But looking back once you've finished, it's nothing special

Još jedan u nizu duplih albuma za koje apsolutno nije bilo potrebe da budu dupli jer je tu jedna ponavljajuća ideja ukupno.

Stephen Stills is a very talented musician and no one knows that more than Stephen Stills. Here, he takes a very long 71 minutes to prove it to us through a variety of styles, al of which wind up sounding pretty much the same in his hands.
Manassas comes from the Hebrew meaning, “that which makes us forget.” Exactly. A perfectly titled piece of work.

Not the best technical recording and I think the album suffered a bit from feeling sort of flat. The instrumentation is clearly great and the gang harmony is intricate but it gets lost in the squash a touch. There are some solid lyrics in here but maybe it just isn't my speed?

Adequate stuff. 70 minutes was not necessary.

Mediocre 70’s rock and too much of it. There is some good playing but it doesn’t save the songs. The only track I really liked was “Bound To Fall” and was unsurprised to learn that was the one song Stills himself didn’t sing.

This album is a bit too long for my liking. It was pretty basic country/rock. Nothing too bad, nothing too good.