Songs for Survivors
With his fifth solo outing, Graham Nash ends a song cycle he kicked off with his 1971 solo debut,Songs for Beginners.Song for Survivors, finished just before his 60th  birthday, finds theHollies/CSNYvet making an uneasy peace with himself and his choices. Nash is still a tiger, but here he rails against growing old and docile and, worse, repeating himself. The brooding "Blizzard of Lies" conveys  a churlish exasperation at finding himself on the same well-worn terrain  he traveled years before. He returns to the theme again with the atmospheric "Chelsea Hotel," which carries the whiff of decay ("We will carry on / Searching for truth with perpetual youth that will fade and be gone in a blink of an eye / The world will be passing us by"). Salvation for Nash lies in love and enduring friendships, and he celebrates the former with three love songs for his wife and the latter with a paean to pals, "Nothing in the World."--Jaan Uhelszki