Search and destroy: Neil Young

One of my favorite recent covers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtcx-zv-ijg

I think Zuma is perfect except for 'Lookin For A Love' which I hate and always skip. Can't understand why 'Through My Sails' could be considered filler and not that clunker. Could've had the slower 'Sedan Delivery' on there instead, or even 'Born To Run'. No real complaints with the list though - Time Fades Away is my #1 pick if I have to.

that lee ann womack cover is great

Indeed, beautiful cover. Awesome pedal steel and fiddle on it. Definitely on the good side of schmaltz.

Alfred OTM

That whole album is great

Thanks! Anyone who still thinks of Lee Ann Womack as the "I Hope You Dance" singer should listen to her last three album. Holy shit.

"Colorado". Neil and Crazy Horse went high up into their mountaintop Colorado studio with a week's supply of oxygen in tanks but it turned out to be helium. They plowed ahead. If anything I have to admire their willingness to throw any ol' fluff out there and pass it off as a NY&CH album.

This isn't bad at all.

w-w-wait a minute fellas! This is the big Neil thread these days:
neil young

I'd destroy these!

no Trans material! A+

I don't think his weakest moments have anything to do with the intent of doing something topical. He's made plenty of great records - many his best moments - that were direct social or political statements: "Pocahontas," "Rockin' in the Free World," many great anti-drug songs, "After the Gold Rush" "Southern Man," "Sixty to Zero" (not the album version but the great electrified live recording Jimmy McDonough gushed about - it was finally released on Bluenote Café), "Welfare Mothers," and "OHIO." Some of these were even done after CNN and Blitzer were household names. What went wrong is when didacticism and slogans took up his entire focus. Even then he could pull off a good track or two in that mold but there was no way he was going to come up with a great album's worth of them, not even close.

Aw, I love Cripple Creek Ferry - Neil trying to channel the easy vibe of The Band's second LP

How can anyone dislike "Through My Sails"?! It's such an unassuming little tune; it feels like we're hearing Neil sing a lullaby to himself.

yah Through My Sails is great

cripple creek ferry is borderline demented to include on a list of his worst songs

when did you stop listening to his new albums?

I like "There's a World", despite the orchestra it's the last sign of child-like Neil before the mid-70s darkness changed his outlook forever. "Captain Kennedy" isn't quite a good song, but as a character vignette, it's vivid and has a reason to exist.
My worst-of would mostly be crude electric throwaways:

We Don't Smoke It No More
Stupid Girl
Homegrown
Motorcycle Mama
Welfare Mothers
Piece of Crap

yeah stupid girl is a standout pick for worst neil songs of the first half of his career

homegrown was album of the year on the 420 thread

if you are actually talking about *actual worst* not just *worst that i am aware of* every song would be culled from the last 15 or so years

I was using Alfred's 1968 - 2003 limits, and there are several albums even from that era that I haven't heard. The bad later stuff I've heard hasn't stuck in my head at all.

Neil's released enough new (not archival) material since Americana to make a really good single-disc compilation, but you have to sift through at least six albums and some one-offs to get it.

Cripple Creek Ferry is very fun to sing.

I've enjoyed most of the new songs he's released in this century, though read and heard enough meh re Colorado and Barn, especially the former, that I may never get to those.

I've defended "Stupid Girl" on here before--love the sound of it...Also love "Through My Sails"; if I step back and try to be objective, I can maybe see someone else finding it too CSN or something (tautological: they're all on it). "Cripple Creek Ferry" (and "Till the Morning Comes") are the most perfect distillation in miniature of Gold Rush's melodic genius.

The harmonies on Till The Morning Comes are fantastic

Through My Sails??!!!!?

I’ve never been keen on Rust Never Sleeps (but love Love Rust) because the production is so dull after the preceding records. The only Neil records that actively annoy me are Change Your Mind (destroys the flow on an otherwise great record) and I’m the Ocean (it’s grating). There’s a lot of generic Neil stuff but it doesn’t like *bother* me.

I don’t even mind let’s roll

Interesting, there was a Rolling Stone reader's poll for the best post-70s Neil Young songs where both "Change Your Mind" and "I'm The Ocean" were in the top 10 (and the only songs from their respective albums). The former is my favourite extended Crazy Horse song.

I'm the Ocean is massive

Change Your Mind

From "Sleeps with Angels"? I *love* "Change Your Mind" and love its place on the record.

Love Rust--Neil's long-lost album of Barry White covers.

The only Neil records that actively annoy me are Change Your Mind (destroys the flow on an otherwise great record) and I’m the Ocean (it’s grating).

Wah? Two of my favourite 90s Neil jams!

Yeah, me as well, especially "I'm the Ocean" which could be his greatest '90s release, IMHO. "Change Your Mind" isn't on the same level, but it's the centerpiece of Sleeps with Angels which is a really good album, maybe even a great one. I never got into Mirror Ball overall, there's only a few keepers like "I'm the Ocean" but Sleeps with Angels is the only studio album from the '90s besides Ragged Glory that I really like as a whole.

I guess I can understand "I'm the Ocean" dribbling on, but dribbling on's what he does best, or among the things he does well, so if you prefer other Young james we're cool.

Sleeps with Angels continually surprises me with its spookiness: "Driveby," "Safeway Cart," the title rack, "Prime of Life."

Yeah, the rest of that LP is stunning start-to-finish.

I re-listened to both those records, and I still think Ocean is a unexceptional stomper with cloying lyrics and a repetitive melody (even by Young standards, speaking as someone who likes the mashed potatoes song on Reactor).

Change Your Mind has wonderful atmospherics when he’s not singing, and I enjoy the verse melody, but I always dread the arrival (and re-arrival and re-arrival) of the chorus, so I can’t lost in it like, e.g. Ordinary People or Cortez

'barn' is sounding pretty good on first listen!

I'm stunned by Christgau's "A." I also think he vastly overrated Fork in the Road but he was more or less right about Americana (which would be an A album in my book had Neil dropped "Get a Job" and maybe "Wayfarin' Stranger"), so I'll give it another try.

(*it* being Barn)

digging the noisier songs, especially

There's a piece on the new Neil Young album on the AV Club, and it contains this clunker:

There are likely two main reasons why Young hasn’t seemed to engender the kind of latter-day renaissance that some of his contemporaries have enjoyed, like Joni Mitchell or Jackson Browne.

Wtf is he talking about? Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne? They had latter-day career comebacks? Or is he talking about just a general re-appreciation? 'Cause Joni hasn't put out a record in maybe 15 years, but it doesn't matter, because she's been more or less worshipped for her entire career. And Jackson Browne? Who gives a shit about Jackson Browne? Maybe there was some belated "Late for the Sky" love, but that album seems like one of those "I don't like Jackson Browne except for ... " situations.

And of course Neil famously *did* "engender" a "a latter-day renaissance." It's just been that much more "latter" *since* then.

I think there's been a greater appreciation of Joni in recent year, not that she wasn't well regarded, but it seems like you hear more about her and she's now where she should be in the canon

no idea what he's talking about with Jackson Browne

also Neil is just Neil now, as you say after the 90s comeback I feel like he's in that zone of permanent respect

Huh, I always thought at the very least several of her primo '70s albums ("Blue" et al.) were totally canon. For sure, afaict nothing she released after the '70s got much traction, but I'm not sure much of it really deserves reassessment as lost masterpieces or anything.

Anyway, "Barn" is already more memorable than "Colorado," which I always forget even exists.

Phoebe Bridgers recently put out a new version of "Kyoto" featuring Browne, and she appeared in his most recent music video. So he's a little hip right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_gWWzLph24

re the xpost topical: there's this thing that can happen, esp. as you get older, when you look away from what RIP Dave Hickey called misty mountain bullshit, and accept that you're an organism, with a sell-by date, circle o' life. But you can't accept no more life to carry on, maybe especially if you have kids, grandkids, and see the planet with its own accelerating sell-by date. Hence, in the midst of a massive wave of legacy product, music old and new, we got The Monsanto Years, which I also dig the sound of, so P&J'd it (I've liked most of the all-new albums he's released this century, but only TMY and Americana made my Top 10s--albums sure don't have to be perfect to do that, but they have to satisfy in ways that nothing else quite does during year of release)

(See also Harry Dean Stanton re mortality, thinking etc., over on his thread.)

I thought Americana a fun minor diversion like Reactor; did not understand Christgau-ian hosannas. They're Crazy Horsed versions of folk songs I don't play willingly.