When you're a legend like Neil Young, you sometimes start to act like one. Remember Trans? Or Everybody's Rocking? Or This Note's For You? Or even Mirror Ball? Albums of musical styles that were not really in his wheelhouse but that, seemingly on a whim, he wanted to play. Most artists used to be forced to keep these tapes to themselves. In the internet age you can put them out digitally on your own "label."
Not for Neil, however. All of the albums listed above were released on whatever label he was on at the time. So if fans just went out an picked up the latest Neil Young album and got one of these without hearing anything about it first, they may well have been a bit disappointed.
Neil's newest album is title Americana and is being put out on Reprise Records. He is pushing it heavily on his web-site and on Facebook and if you are so inclined you can listen to the entire album for a short time at Rolling Stone (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/album-premiere-neil-young-and-crazy-horse-americana-20120528).
The album's premise is taking old folk songs and doing them Crazy Horse style, or as Neil puts it: "They're songs we all know from kindergarden, but Crazy Horse has rearranged them, and they now belong to us."
The results are no different than you might expect. Crashing guitars and bad harmonies are a staple of the Crazy Horse sound and they are front and center here. Most songs have been so rearranged that they bear little resemblance to the original other than you remember the lyrics.
While there are few interesting moments ("This Land is My Land" and "God Save the Queen"), the result is bad. I am a fan of the sloppy Crazy Horse treatment of many of Neil's songs, but it just doesn't work here.
As I alluded to at the outset, this should have been a private release album (if at all) at a reduced price for his fans. Neil has always followed the beat of a different drummer and this album is no exception.
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We went to see Neil Young last night, in a solo concert. It was wonderful! He looks great, sounds great, and played all alone. tickets were something positive. He played the organ, pump organ, piano, harmonica, electric guitar, and acoustic guitar.
ReplyDeletegetting tired of critics writing reviews after one quick listen. i've been a young fan all my life and this is his best work in years. listen to songs 4 through 6 3 times in a row and get back to me. by then any fan will realize the whole album is a classic. people figure he's old and washed up so that's their ill-conceived preconception. if 'Americana' was released in the 70s it would be an all-time classic by now.
DeleteI assure you that it was more than one quick listen and I do not think that he is washed up. I just don't think this album works. This is not his best album in years. I was not a big fan of Chrome Dreams II, but it is better than this. As is the wonderful Prairie Wind. This is an experimental album for hardcore fans only (which my anonymous friend obviously is) and not for the general public.
ReplyDeletei was skeptical of a new horse album as i lean to the gators. but this is album sounds like the horse of the 70s. grooves oscilating from loose to tight and back with the awkward yet natural harmonies. if you close your eyes its hard to believe that 4 decades separates americana and after the gold rush. glad they didn't ruin it with long feed-back oriented intros and endings. i love prairie wind but i find that a children's choir resonates better with neil than a bunch of saxaphones.
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