Search and destroy: Neil Young

aw Alfred I'm sorry I'm being dickish

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

haha no worries at all. I thought xgau was in my rear view mirror.

Christgau appears in a pair of Young-themed DVDs I just watched with my brother, The First Decade and Three More Decades, released in 2006. It's 20% performance clips, 10% contextual voiceover and 70% critics weighing in. I think the only studio album that doesn't get a mention or appear onscreen is Landing On Water.
Xgau says he became a Young convert seeing him with CSNY live in New York in 1970. I was curious to see Johnny Rogan, whose 1982 Young biography must have been one of the first rock books I ever read. Rogan defends Greendale while Barney Hoskyns says that the Greendale shows appalled him with their arrogance and convinced him that Young had lost his spark.

i listened to barn on friday and found the best parts completely interchangeable with any number of new millennium neil albums: decent for sure, but certainly nothing revelatory. i enjoyed it while it was playing, but have not felt the urge to hear it again. two and a half mics.

This has been my experience for the last 20 years of NY.

xxp Greendale was the first new Neil Young release I encountered after becoming a fan, so I remember the polarized reaction to it very well. I recall Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis (still with the Trib and Sun-Times) being flattered that the hype sticker only had two blurbs, both from their newspaper reviews, but they also joked that they may have been the ONLY two suitable reviews Reprise could find. (Kot and DeRogatis were two of the very few who placed Greendale on their year's ten best list.)

I thought it was okay, but it wasn't a great album - it was missing something, both energy (nearly every looong track seemed sluggish) and like a spark of some kind. The one cut that seemed perfect as-is was "Bandit" which was also a solo cut. Even though Crazy Horse was technically on everything else, I think relegating Pancho to keyboards was a tactical error. I still kept the album because it came with a DVD and in a way THAT feels more like the album to me - just Neil performing the whole thing at St. Vicar in Ireland. It works for a whole lot of reasons, but the main addition comes from Neil's talk in-between tracks. Everything works when it's placed in the context of Neil's storytelling rather than just Neil with or without Crazy Horse running through the songs.

I barely checked out the new Return to Greendale set because I want to see the Blu-ray, not listen to the CD, but the clips I saw feel like an improvement over the album. Even with Pancho still on keyboards, the performances are more energetic - it's like they found that missing "spark" on stage.

I'm sure this will go over really well (I've said as much before): for me, Neil hasn't made a really good album since Ragged Glory or Freedom. There are few songs I've loved--I count "Driftin' Back" as one of his greatest ever--but most of every album since those two goes right past me. I haven't heard them all (half?), and I haven't heard the new one.

i will go further.

harvest moon. that was the last really good one.

or wait, i got my timeline wrong.

to me, harvest moon was his first great one since american stars n bars

my view of the late 80s stuff has gotten brighter and brighter, but i still love the shit out of harvest moon in a way that i don't for any of his other albums after star n bars. i do like quite a few of his other albums, just not adore.

clemenza, that's a reasonable consensus opinion. I stop at Sleeps with Angels and "I'm the Ocean." I did go to the Greendale show, that was okay.

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.

I think "Sleeps" might be his last one as good as his best stuff, and the doomy vibe even gives it a final record sort of feel, but the best of the rest are definitely almost as good as if not better than the next tier of his stuff. And for that matter most of his last decade's worth of material is much better than his worst stuff. The worst you can say about it is that it's boring.

"walk like a giant" off psychedelic pill is massive and turned into borderline industrial music on that tour

as much as anything Neil did in the 70s

In fairness, I'm setting the bar high: "really good" = mid-'70s/Everybody Knows/Gold Rush good. Expecting someone to reach that level 30 or 40 years later--not to mention how much I've changed over that time frame; I'm just not as receptive to new work as I once was--isn't remotely fair. One of my favourite Dylan quotes ever (talking about his mid-'60s work, paraphrased): "I don't know where that came from. I can do other things now, but I can't do that."

He said something very similar to that in the 60 Minutes interview. Somebody read him some of the lyrics to I think Desolation Row or It's Alright Ma and he said he had no idea where something like that came from but it's not something you just sit down to write.

I think that's where I got it from (and I think he did say "but I can't do that," unless I'm mixing him up with Meatloaf)--incredibly honest.

“You can’t do something forever,” he says. “I did it once, and I can do other things now. But I can’t do that.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-bob-dylan-on-songwriting-2004/

- Meat Loaf

the problem for me with nu neil is the lyrics are just so corny. he used to kind of dance around corny and hit profundity instead. but now his sentimentality has completely clouded over the true vision stuff. you could really hear it start to creep in with rust never sleeps, which is still great of course, and hits profoundity buttons hard for me in spite of it. it becomes a problem for me starting with "rockin in the free world". i still need to hear sleeps with angels. i'm with km though in that i completely love harvest moon.

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.

I see a pretty big difference between the latter day approaches of Dylan and Neil.

Bob has put out 5 albums of new material in the last 25 years. He seems to wait until he has a batch of "good" material before releasing anything and if he doesn't, he does covers or welds iron gates or whatever.

Neil has put out 15 albums of new material.

I'm not trying to get at who is better or anything, but it's not surprising that Neil is someone whose quality control is pretty suspect.

Neil's lyrical decline is really bad, and the fact he's tended to make albums like Monstanto Years where they are right in your face as opposed to jam out Crazy Horse workouts where I don't tend to care.

I used to attribute it to him quitting weed but I just looked and I guess he stared up back in 2019.

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.