Chris Stills - When the Pain Dies Down: Live in Paris

If the best thing Steve Stills ever did was crib “For What It’s Worth” for Buffalo Springfield, the worst thing he ever did was tell his son that striking one note guitar riffs and topical lyrics was the devil’s music. Or we can assume that the 31 year-old Chris Stills did everything in his power to make his music even less threatening than his father’s. Either way, his live EP When the Pain Dies Down: Live in Paris is a bilingual exercise in French-American relations that’s as inoffensive and unmemorable as a foreign diplomat making small talk with Laura Bush. Turns out Chris not only cut his hair, but he’s writing for the same crowd that was forbidden from listening to his dad’s band back in ’69. The record opens with the title track, the song most eligible for anything more than grocery store loudspeakers, and then only sort of. His voice finds the right combination of melody and melancholy, but the drums are impossibly tight, and his piano, while well played, is almost purely mechanical. The rest of the album fits for acoustic Jeff Buckley rips, a cover of The Band’s “The Weight” done entirely in French, and a couple neat little rockers for the kids. It’s all pretty formless really, and Stills’ only mode of recourse is that every once in a while he gets excited, and amps the power in his voice to accentuate a word or bring home a chorus. But even those charged bit of raucous defiance don’t manage more than small bits of spray paint on an otherwise blank canvas, and the son of the great Stephen Stills finds himself right next to Rod Stewart in the easy listening section. This is what musical talent looks like when it’s got nothing to do and people to please. [www.v2.fr]