POP MUSIC REVIEW : CS&N; Show Vocal Strength in Numbers

For Crosby, Stills & Nash, harmonies are just about everything, and the pitch-perfection of same--or lack thereof--has made or broken many a show over the years.

Early on Tuesday night at the Universal Amphitheatre, at the climax of the vocally demanding “In My Dreams,” David Crosby seemed exultant, clenching his fist and jerking his elbow back in a job-well-done salute. “OK, if the hard stuff goes good, it’s gonna be a great night,” he promised.

Fortunately, the hard stuff continued to go well indeed throughout the 140-minute set, the first of two nights at Universal (the trio plays Saturday at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa). The rewards of clean living and all that.

The three voices in the CSN stew are such an unlikely teaming that it seems almost providential that they ever got together, and Crosby’s proud remark was a tacit acknowledgment that there’s always potential for screwing up the tight vocal arrangements. They know it, the audience knows it, and when a tricky harmony goes flawlessly--as in, say, their version of the Beatles’ “In My Life”--there’s more victorious hand-slapping than at a Dream Team massacre.

These three are in good enough shape vocally to show off a bit, even. With the set-closing “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” the trio held out and then emphatically cut off the closing notes of each of the last few lines--almost as if in a stunt.

There’s no new product to support with this “acoustic” tour--not unless you count the long-awaited CD release of the 1971 live album, “Four Way Street”--leaving the show predictably but happily heavy on the standards, all as beautifully rendered as a nostalgist might hope. (Exception: set nadir “Deja Vu,” which included some wayward moments suggesting that maybe they hadn’t all been there before after all.)

“Strength in numbers” definitely applies here--gloriously, in moments. Individually, though, CSN tends to be less than the sum of its parts, and the show did bog down with the inevitable two-song solo segments, in which oldies were paired with new songs from each member.

Left to their own devices, Graham Nash indulged an unseemly flair for melodrama with the portentously anti-religious “Cathedral”; Crosby revived “the song they threw me out of the Byrds for” (understandably so), his meandering menage a trois tribute “Triad”; and Stephen Stills failed to evoke ‘60s glory in introducing his new riots-inspired, Bush-bashing “Won’t Go Away.” In other words, here’s to the buddy system.

Meanwhile, will freshman Marc Cohn be as beloved when he surpasses the two-decade mark?

Perhaps, but that isn’t evident yet. Cohn’s approach in his opening set (on keyboards, accompanied by a guitarist) proved warm and pleasant, but little in his initial batch of material, however genial, suggests a lasting kind of distinction. Even his choice of a cover song, Jesse Winchester’s “Isn’t That So,” seemed ordinary. Vocally soulful but squarely in the earnest singer/songwriter mode, Cohn is either the thinking man’s Michael Bolton or the dull man’s Bruce Hornsby, or both. Either way, the best-new-artist Grammy winner needs some more time to live up to his hype.

At the Universal, Cohn was joined at the climax of his set-closing number, “Perfect Love,” by Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne. Unfortunately, the cheers they generated pretty much drowned out whatever harmonic subtleties they were contributing.

“What a cheap way to get an encore,” Cohn joked upon his reappearance. Not nearly as cheap as waiting until then to play his hit, “Walking in Memphis.”

* Crosby, Stills & Nash and Marc Cohn sing Friday at the Pacific Amphitheatre, 88 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa. Show time: 7:30 p.m. $11.25 to $55. (714) 740-2000 (Ticketmaster).