Legacy artists can sometimes become convinced that the past – and the sounds and lyrical themes that made them famous – should be left in the rearview mirror. Believing their best years, and best songs, are in front of them, such artists become subsumed in reinvention, trendy collaborations or mediocrity, which often renders them desperate or tepid. Think Joni Mitchell’s Dog Eat Dog or David Bowie’s Never Let Me Down for prime examples.

At first glance, Graham Nash’s Now hints at these trappings, its title suggesting a preoccupation with the present that may mean so long to the past. In fact, the record doesn’t stray too far from the magic of his wheelhouse. Fans of Crosby, Stills & Nash, and the singer’s first two ’70s solo works – Songs For Beginners and Wild Tales – will recognise this album’s touchstones: namely love, political outrage, seraphic vocal harmonies and a breezy blend of acoustic, electric and steel guitars.

With Now, Nash doesn’t shun his roots, but he does update his propensities for the modern day, singing of current political turmoil, environmental destruction and his love for wife Amy Grantham, 37 years his junior, whom he married in 2019. The artistic geography may be familiar, but the material is fresh.

“I used to think that I would never love again/I used to think that I’d be all on my own”, he sings to open the album, an attention-grabbing misdirect from the thematic core of the first song, “Right Now”. Instead of woe-is-me self-pity, the song turns defiant, thumbing its nose at those who’d wish to steal Nash’s joy or criticise his choices. “Here I am/Still Living my life/Right now”, he proclaims, like an old-growth oak tree weathering a storm. “Right now”, he repeats.

It’s this mix of old and new, and the self-awareness and social responsibility that comes with age, that propels the notion of “now” even as the new songs ring of Nash’s musical history. Fifty-two years ago, on “Chicago”, Nash detailed the violence and racism surrounding the 1968 Democratic Convention and the subsequent trial of the Chicago Seven, when Black Panthers leader Bobby Seale was gagged and bound to a chair in the courtroom. Today, with “Golden Idol”, a similarly clear-eyed account of corruption, steered by a tempestuous electric guitar riff instead of a foreboding organ, he aims his pen at the Republican members of congress who’ve sought to diminish the terror of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

The key difference between the two songs is a palpable loss of optimism. Instead of proclaiming that “we can change the world”, he sings of politicians who are bought and paid for by lobbyists. “Tell me why”, he begs throughout, relaying not an artistic desperation, but a deeply human one, an amplification of reasonable Americans’ frustrations with a flawed system and the inaction that keeps it alive.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Threaded through Now is the hope and elation brought on by love, and Nash’s unselfconscious mission to sing of it. If “When It Comes To You” and “Follow Your Heart” are all dripping, adult contemporary-adjacent sentimentality, standout love song “It Feels Like Home” updates the scene he set in 1970 with “Our House”. Its sunny blend of harmonica, acoustic guitar and pedal steel recall Nash’s days in hippie Laurel Canyon, with lyrics that reaffirm his fondness for the refuge of a lover’s company.

“A Better Life”, the album’s second track, also recalls a moment on Songs For Beginners when Nash sings of “Better Days”. But here he updates his historical rumination on broken heartedness to a call for collective action, positing the notion that society has a duty to make better choices for the sake of future generations. A similar historical arc is traced with “Buddy’s Back”, a paean to the rock’n’roll pioneer that doubles as a trip down memory lane, recounting his formation of The Hollies with Allan Clarke.

Given the evident callbacks threaded throughout Now, and the earnestness of an octogenarian in love, cynics might assume Nash is out of ideas. However, there’s a certain bravery in a songwriter knowing his audience, his place in the world and the broader cultural conversation. That he’s been a working musician for more than 60 years and has also avoided ill-fitting collaborations and other discomfiting trends is quite the feat. In making work that continues to challenge oppressive systems and relay his tender feelings, it’s clear Nash is very much alive in the now.

Not all band’s names offer immediate clues to the sound of their music. Yet this couldn’t be further from the truth when it comes to North Sumatran band Suarasama, whose moniker is a combination of two Indonesian words: ‘suara’, which means voices or sounds but also opinions, and ‘sama’, meaning togetherness and equality.

Formed in 1995 by ethnomusicology lecturers Irwansyah Harahap and Rithaony Hutajulu, Suarasama made music that was a joyful exploration of the planet’s many musical forms. Timeline was their second album, originally released in 2013 and now reissued for the first time on vinyl by Drag City. But this commemoration of its 10th anniversary is tempered by loss, as co-founder Harahap, a major creative force of the band who was responsible for all the stringed instrumentation, passed away in 2021 at the age of 60. To revisit Timeline now is not only to consider their music but also to pay tribute to the man behind so much of its spirit and power.

Timeline opens with the instantly gripping “Untukmu Yang Berperang”, a song influenced by a traditional West African folk narrative that depicts the catastrophic losses of war. Hutajulu’s gorgeous voice imbues the song’s anti-war message with profound resonance, a communal groove built by the interweaving of the guitar, woodblock and Malaysian percussion. The instrumentation is relatively simple, yet the result sounds as full as an orchestra.

The duo, especially Harahap, were deeply interested in ritual music of various world traditions, a form that naturally produces repetitive, meditative sounds. This is particularly evident on “Dukkha”, inspired by Mandailing (Sumatran) and Eastern European musical traditions. A drone opens this song and then serves as its spine while plucked strings create a romantic mood. As the music builds, it starts to resemble an English folk song, its whirl evoking children twirling around a maypole. But the spectral drone is ever present, both anchor and connective tissue, the last sound standing as the song comes to an end.

Harahap excelled at numerous stringed instruments: guitar, gambus (a short-necked Malaysian lute), hasapi (a two-stringed Indonesian lute), the Arabic oud and mandolin, to name just a few. This mastery is on display throughout the album, but perhaps most prominent on the titular song, a near-14-minute transcendent odyssey. His playing is furiously elegant, fingers seeming to dance upon the strings with a lightness that belies the complicated rhythmic patterns of the music. Vocals give the song a sense of community and percussive elements keep the beat, but lute-family instruments are the star of the show. The song charts their history through space and time by incorporating various plucked traditions and techniques from around the world. It’s also a showcase for the 10 stringed saz-guitar that Harahap designed himself, an instrument that combines an acoustic guitar with the Turkish saz, a long-necked lute with a round body.

“Sea Fish” is the song that sounds most like you might hear it on one of Drag City’s American releases, all fingerpicked strings and mounting tension. It’s easy to imagine a melancholic man mumbling over the music, but the Indonesian vocals elevate the song to an emotional space beyond sadness, reaching towards a more nuanced emotional experience. “Awesome” is another graceful tour de force on strings, catchy in a way that feels effortless. Indeed, the entire album feels that way, with the clear-headed air that a lifetime of meditation might yield.

The second-longest song on Timeline is “Journey”, 12-and-a-half minutes of lute-playing that can only be described as the sound of a spiral Eschering itself into infinity. While none of the songs slouch (“Awesome” is the shortest, clocking in at just under five minutes), the band is unquestionably at their best when they go long on spun-out jams that never meander.

Timeline ends on a quieter note, with the peaceful – if a little inert, at least in comparison to the rest of the music – folk-pop of “Kita Berbagi (We Share)”. But the music of Suarasama is suffused with peace and hope from its very existence, a comment on the potential and possibility of global human connection in sound and artistic philosophy. As a document of the band’s desire to fuse disparate yet related musical traditions, and as a stunning and pleasurable listen without the need for context, Timeline is profoundly satisfying.

The two songs that frame The National’s ninth album — fragile opener “Once Upon A Poolside” and quiet finale “Send For Me” — govern this remarkable record’s tone.

This is not The National in rhapsodic, quick-fire mode; the big choruses and sonic complexities have been dampened down and even guest turns from big names – Taylor Swift (“The Alcott”), Phoebe Bridgers (“This Isn’t Helping”, “Your Mind Is Not Your Friend”), Sufjan Stevens (“Once Upon A Poolside”) – feel like conversations held between glass.

Instead this is a band subdued and half-submerged – programmed drums keep the music lower, like waist-high water that Matt Berninger’s voice must wade through, as he sings of alienation and detachment, of relationships disintegrating, worlds dismantling.

For all his struggles to write …Frankenstein, this is perhaps the finest lyrical hour of Berninger’s career. There is a tenderness that overrides the wit, a simplicity and carefulness to his lines. In “New Order T-Shirt” particularly, the band have created one of those perfect National numbers: a track built on a melancholic musical loop and propelled by a sweet nostalgia; a love song striking in the precision of its imagery, from black flats to magazine skyscrapers, Kentucky aquariums to blue American Spirits.

Even without the backstory or an understanding of how difficult this record was to make, …Frankenstein is a skilful portrait of what it means to feel disconnected from the joy and urgency of life.