Various Artists
Album: Music Is Love
Label: Route61
Tracks: 27
Website: http://www.musicislovetribute.com

Music is love is 'a singer songwriters' tribute to the music of (David) Crosby, (Stephen) Stills, (Graham) Nash and (Neil) Young which gives a catalogue of hundreds and hundreds of songs to choose from - not just 'Déjà Vu', 'American Dream' and 'Looking Forward' as I erroneously thought (my defence is that I'm no expert with their individual outputs).

The clue is in the name; 'Music Is Love' is a Crosby song from his 1971 album 'If I Could Only Remember My Name' performed here by Icicle Works front man Ian McNabb. On the album notes McNabb says: "I tried to do it a bit differently from the record, as what's the point of copying something? It's never going to be as good as the original, so you might as well take it somewhere else." It is a shame that more of the contributing artists hadn't of had the same attitude as too many of them sound like they are doing the best CSNY copy as they can muster.

Unsurprisingly, my preference on this wide collection is the Young songs - Eliiot Murphy's take on 'Birds' and Carrie Rodriguez's sublime rendering of 'Cortez The Killer' and also Americana artists Neal Casal and Eileen Rose, who both chose Nash songs - 'Hey You (looking at the moon) and 'Just a song before I go' respectively.

Most tracks are pretty good (Jennifer Stills' version on her fathers 'Love the one you're with' sounding like she is singing to stay in X-Factor is a notable exception) but there is little cohesion. If it where not for the excellent packaging - nice, thick matt card hold the two CD's safely and the booklet gives every artists space to explain why they chose the tracks they did - then I would recommend listening on Spotify then downloading a dozen of your personal favourites to make a very good single album.

John 'The Jacket' Hawes