"How do you write about breaking up with Joni Mitchell?" asks Graham Nash in the liner notes to his first solo album. Good question. His 1970 split with the willowy Canadian singer-songwriter was the seed of this modest 33-minute solo debut, which proves the cliché that unfortunate events can generate excellent art. The stripped-down piano ballads "Better Days" and "Simple Man" ("I just want to...

If you accept Graham Nash on his own terms, which is simply as a nice guy who somehow wound up a musician, then you probably find him to be an agreeable sort. Add a sharp ear for melody, a pleasant voice that tends to grow on you, and a surprisingly restrained and beautiful production, and you have a good sense of what Songs for Beginners is all about.

The material, with a few notable exceptions,...

Contrary to the title, Nash's second solo album offers no wild tales but instead delivers retrospective observations in a restrained country-rock style. Nash, who not long ago produced David Blue to maximum advantage, is overly modest in producing himself. Wild Tales is reflective without being poetic; its spirit is one of post-Woodstock enervation. Nash's finest past achievement was "Lady of the...