Search and destroy: Neil Young

xp Oops, I missed Together Through Life. So Bob has six. Even then, I think latter day Bob material suffers from sameness, Love & Theft and Rough and Rowdy Ways excepted.

Hmm. He's one of those guys that occasionally stumbles upon some absolutely brilliant lyrics, but I learned long ago that I am better off not paying close attention to exactly what he's saying.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, December 13, 2021 8:06 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is super wrong imo.

it's like at some point he switched from actually telling truth in a disarmingly simple way to being like "i am known for telling truth in a disarmingly simple way, and i will do that" while completely losing the truth.

the problem for me with nu neil is the lyrics are just so corny.

I run into this all the time. The music always comes first with me, but if the music's ordinary, that's when I start to notice lyrics. And latter-day Neil is often so plainspoken, so literal, the words vanish immediately. Something like "Old Guitar": "It's been up and down the country roads/It's brought a tear and a smile/It's seen its share of dreams and hopes/And never went out of style." The first time I played that a few months ago, I was trying to fill in the rhymes as it went along; more than one I got right, not a good sign.

it's like at some point he switched from actually telling truth in a disarmingly simple way to being like "i am known for telling truth in a disarmingly simple way, and i will do that" while completely losing the truth.

― Nedlene Grendel as Basenji Holmo (map)

otm

Lou Reed flirted with this approach.

Reed too! Why The Blue Mask lost me.

Compare moon/June Neil to--I know, unfair--the guy who wrote "Cinnamon Girl."

Ten silver saxes, a bass with a bow
The drummer relaxes and waits between shows
For his cinnamon girl

Utter perfection--and then to pull in the last bit about money from home out of nowhere. (Love the Yahoo/Musixmatch rendering of that last verse: "Pa send me money now/I'm going to make it somehow/I need another chance/You see your baby loves details/Yeah yeah yeah.")

No lie: details.

MuchMusic used to keep the video for "Harvest Moon" in pretty heavy rotation when it was new

I think I had a warped perception in the 80s of how far Neil was out of fashion, because MuchMusic regularly played most of his videos: "Wonderin'", "Cry Cry Cry", "Are There Any More Real Cowboys", "Touch the Night", "People on the Street" all got shown without any kind of disclaimer about how much he was considered to have lost the plot.

xposting I was thinking specifically of "After the Gold Rush," which is literally and figuratively dopey.

lol wrong again

"Touch the Night" got moderate to heavy MTV rotation, according to the Billboard chart tracking these things.

Hey, most Neil lyrics do the job, there's just not much I'd scribble on my Trapper Keeper.

I felt the same kind of loss of lyrical acuity in the final Joni Mitchell record, Shine, although she can't blame it on being too prolific. A combination of artlessness and an almost obsessiveness about pounding the point home.

...the same point through multiple songs.

I was thinking specifically of "After the Gold Rush," which is literally and figuratively dopey.

― Josh in Chicago

I was marveling at these lyrics the other day. not dopey at all

yeah they're really incredible imo, i think the overarching idea is quite simple (hippie dream stuff) but the imagery that conveys it is very resonant and convincing. "i was lying in a burned-out basement with the full moon in my eyes i was hoping for replacement when the sun burst through the sky" is just breathtakingly beautiful. i'm just spitballing now but i wonder if he stopped watching movies at the turn of the millennium or something? like, his ability to write seems connected to images, especially images that work in kind of a film logic. i don't get the that at all in the few newish songs i've tried.

"There was a band playing in my head/and I felt like getting high" just punches me in the gut. But then, "I was thinking about what a friend once said/I was hoping it was a lie" finishes me off and i'm dead.

puts me right back in my twenties

His 1989-1994 comeback coincided with the CDs blowing out running times - Freedom and Sleeps With Angels could be very good with a trim down to 40 minutes.

I like Prairie Wind from 2006 even if it’s a bit overly sentimental.

I'm more put off by his upper register on ATGR than the songwriting, consistently top-notch (I prefer the Live Rust version of "Goldrush").

"There was a band playing in my head/and I felt like getting high" just punches me in the gut

lol, i'm sorry, but this actually punches me in the gut

xxp, i couldn't tell if you were being serious or sarcastic!

"I was thinking about what a friend once said/I was hoping it was a lie"--no explanation, nothing leading to or from that line--is brilliant. Beyond brilliant. I don't know how else to say it.

it's not a bad line, but "i felt like getting high" is in the genre of Things That Make the Crowd Go Woo

serious as an mfer, if you were referring to me

usually i get high, and then the band plays in my head. that would be my only complaint

lol, gotcha

I've gotta paraphrase Christgau here: you haven't lived until you've been at a packed Neil Young show for "And I felt like getting high." Corny as can be, I suppose, but a thrilling teenage memory.

if you're hearing a band play in your head and you're already high, wouldn't that make you want to get higher

i was actually thinking about how that song resonates with a previous me (depressed, 20s, too serious) in the same way that Talyor Swift's songs about being young and in love do. Sort of embarrassed at first but then fully in that moment. it helps me see that younger self in a more empathetic way

His 1989-1994 comeback coincided with the CDs blowing out running times - Freedom and Sleeps With Angels could be very good with a trim down to 40 minutes.

I like Prairie Wind from 2006 even if it’s a bit overly sentimental.

I grew to love Prairie Wind after seeing the Heart of Gold film directed by Jonathan Demme. (Looking through the discography, the Greendale: Live at Vicar St. DVD, Prairie Wind, Le Noise and Americana would be the only four newly recorded albums that I enjoy post-Sleeps with Angels - everything I else I have on a homemade compilation.)

I forgot that Freedom was so long - I actually don't listen to it as-is, I went back to the original Times Square LP and swapped out the horrid "Someday" track with "No More" (also from Freedom), replaced "Crime in the City" with the live version from Bluenote Café and added the electric "Rockin' in the Free World" as the final track.

Silver & Gold is great

The title track and "Razor Love" are awesome. I also have a soft spot for "Good to See You."

The Eldorado ep is even better! "Cocaine Eyes" is a top five Young tune, hard to find anywhere (you can download the EP anywhere, though).

even better than Freedom

I haven't bothered with a lot of his recent stuff, tbh, but there are a lot of highlights hiding on albums that are themselves not particularly highlights.

Listening to "Psychedelic Pill" right now and it rules. I love the absolutely perverse indulgence of opening with "Driftin' Back." I love that the first song is nearly 30 minutes long, yet there are *still* two 16-minute songs waiting to get cha later.

The lyrics to Albuquerque are some of my faves
It’s so specific to NY’s experience but also still very relatable to my own life


I've been flyin' down the road
And I've been starvin' to be alone
And independent from the scene that I've known
Albuquerque
So I'll stop when I can
Find some fried eggs and country ham
I'll find somewhere
Where they don't care who I am

The Eldorado ep is even better! "Cocaine Eyes" is a top five Young tune, hard to find anywhere (you can download the EP anywhere, though).

Exactly, that's why I went back to Times Square. Eldorado is basically a 5-song sampler of that album.

Listening to "Psychedelic Pill" right now and it rules

I did the same thing on a drive to the beach today and it also ruled - colour me dumb/inattentive but I hadn't really registed that Driftin' Back was like a press release for Pono - and despite being mostly a gnarled old dude grumbling about MP3 players it still manages to attain some kind of mystic epic status

I like "Unknown Legend" (from Harvest Moon and "I'm the Ocean" as much as anything Neil did in the 70s. MuchMusic used to keep the video for "Harvest Moon" in pretty heavy rotation when it was new, and that was actually my intro to him--a function, I'm sure of my being born in the late 70s and him being irrelevant throughout most of the 80s.

― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Monday, December 13, 2021 6:59 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

A good factoid about this video (possibly posted elsewhere, if so apols) is that it's Dale Crover from Melvins playing the Neil character

xxxpost Albuquerque is so beautiful

iirc there's supposed to be an Archives series release covering the El Dorado/Times Square era, but you know, who knows when and if it ever comes out

yeah there's something Neil's referred to as AMAZING FREEDOM (lol) which covers the 1988-89-ish period. I think it'll probably end up being a disc on a future archives box. there was a sneak preview of "fuckin' up" with the SNL band a little while back, sounded killer.

amazing freedom is too funny

omg @ Amazing Freedom.

When's Lionel Dreams being released?

So I think there's something to "Chrissie Hynde and Crazy Horse," along with other mentions of Crazy Horse in comments on Bandcamp page for Rosali's 2021 No Medium---although she doesn't emphasize the tremolo like Hynde w Pretenders, sounds more like the Hynde Dylan covers set, also doesn't warble like Neil (and this CH, provided by "members of the David Nance Group." and sometimes War On Drugs dude. on good piano and organ, is kept on a medium-sized leash, no caveman stomps, though vivid enough)--but mainly I'm struck by how she can indeed produce some striking Young Neil-worthy vocal melodicism, esp, on opener and closer: can even be--exquisite, yeah I said it. Maybe too much of the same thing at medium tempo etc., but more to choose from for keepers---just see what yall think: https://rosali.bandcamp.com/album/no-medium

omg @ Amazing Freedom.

to be followed by Glorious Ragged Glory

Rosalie is great

David Nance Group probably comes closest to capturing the Crazy Horse vibe of any band on the planet right now, great records, amazing (freedom) live

Yeah that Rosali album is really great, definitely Crazy Horse vibes all over that (as ums points out, due to Nance's group backing her up).

Times Square could have been a pretty good album but the sequencing is insane. "Cocaine Eyes" is the album opener of all openers; to put it next-to-last like that is something only Neil would pull. I would probably sequence it like this:

Cocaine Eyes
On Broadway
Crime In The City
Someday
Box Car
Don't Cry
Heavy Love
Wrecking Ball
Eldorado

Pleasant surprise, I actually like the new one quite a bit. It's a really good "old master" record, what I would realistically hope from someone of Neil's stature who's also closer to 80 than 70. At that age with so much work from the previous decade setting expectations, it's unlikely Neil's going to bust open a lot of new territory, and just physically he's not going to be raging like he was 50, 40, 30 years ago. An A- seems more about right, but xgau isn't far off either.

Will have to check it out, esp. since I've been listening more to Rosali, who now sounds even cooler, like Hope Sandoval, or even Karen Carpenter--times Crazy Horse, yes, and it's a fine balance, and I no longer wonder it's too much of the same thing: there are fine differences, as they continue to get their groovy groove on, across the prairie, street, and Great Divide---yeah, some The Band slipping by toward the end, or at least, "Tender Heart" has a Young Neil-Richard Manuel touch, while getting psychedelicized--

Karen Carpenter and Crazy Horse--Where was that Christmas Special?

Here