Search and destroy: Neil Young

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?

He doesn't know what he's talking about. Jackson Browne's new work has only gotten less attention, a situation that hasn't changed since he took part in this joke on The Simpsons:

https://frinkiac.com/meme/S14E20/1129420.jpg
https://frinkiac.com/meme/S14E20/1131297.jpg

And he hasn't grown in the public discourse - "These Days" has to an extent, but more for Nico's cover. And I actually love Jackson Browne, I think his achievements as a great singer/songwriter will never go away, but the kind of resurgence they're alluding to feels more like whatever's "fashionable" and that hasn't happened with Browne.

But appreciation for Joni definitely has grown. She's never been forgotten or overlooked, but now she's been put in rarefied air - where Neil was in the '90s, that's where Joni is now, someone who's talked and worshipped to an enormous degree across all generations (i.e. you see the influence and appreciation to an enormous degree among the youngest generation). She's also benefitted from the recent push to bring more women into the spotlight (think NPR's greatest albums by women list, which she topped, or Rolling Stone's rebooted 500 list that launched the same album into the top 5 or 10), as well as her not-insignificant health problems. I honestly was afraid she'd leave us by now, or at least be silenced for the remainder of her years, but she's thankfully made a great recovery. And in all fairness, despite her accolades and achievements, it kind of felt like she could be overlooked even 15 or 20 years ago - I was shocked that it took this long to get her a Kennedy Center honor when they've bestowed it on Don Henley and Glenn Frey a long time ago. (Being Canadian doesn't mean anything - just look at McCartney, the Who and Led Zeppelin, all honorees, which reminds me, when's Neil going to get his?)

Damn meme generator!

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Hope that works.

Actually saying she "benefitted" from her health problems is awful - I should say it made people more appreciative because there was the very real possibility they were going to lose her, and as Joni already said it best 50+ years ago, sometimes you don't know what you've 'til it's gone.

oh no you di'int

Jackson Browne is also in the Velvet Underground documentary fwiw.

Pft. Forget Jackson Browne or "latter-day renaissance," John Cale was *in* the VU, and his entire subsequent solo career has been more or less ignored by anything more than a cult audience.

Did Jackson Browne beat you with a switch when you were younger?

A lot of his stuff does make me switch it off.

Josh isn't a woman so I'm guessing no

From the free Xmas Xgau Consumer Guide, here's an approval ov Barn (although, since I strongly disagree with his dismissal of the past 12 years, I might not agree with this either, if I ever hear the album all the way through):
Neil Young & Crazy Horse: Barn (Reprise) In case you haven’t been keeping track, I have. It’s been a full dozen years since the once inexhaustible Young released an album of new songs worth hearing: Fork in the Road, his eco-car statement back when his passion was a revamped Continental that got 100 miles per gallon on “domestic green fuel” and Crazy Horse could thud along like it was old times. Here Crazy Horse is quieter and gentler as the green consciousness their boss embraced as of 2003’s Greendale turns ever more militant and also, unfortunately but fittingly, much darker: “Canerican” is defiantly bipatriotic, “Change Ain’t Never Gonna” takes direct aim at the yahoo yokels whose side he’s always tried to see, and “Today’s People” blames those people for killing the planet and “the children of the fires and floods” who’ll go out with it. There’s relief in the credible romantic passion of “Tumblin’ Through the Years” and “Don’t Forget Love.” But the full-bore astonishment is the penultimate 8:28 “Welcome Back”: “Gonna sing an old song to you right now/One that you heard before/Might be a window to your soul I can open slowly/I’ve been singing this way for so long,” it goes, and that’s just the vocal. What convinces you he means it is the guitar, so quiet and caring it feels like love. A

OK OK, I'll listen!

It’s been a full dozen years since the once inexhaustible Young released an album of new songs worth hearing

what is this inexcusable slander w/r/t Le Noise and Psychedelic Pill

It's fine?

xpost

xpost yeah what a idiotic opinion

I don't like either of those albums -- Lanois is the last producer I'd expect to work with Neil Young successfully, unless I get goose bumps and think of James Murphy -- but I won't stop anyone for embracing them.

yes, we know, you've been wrong on this specific issue for quite some time now but I won't stop you from failing to hear the greatness

unless I get goose bumps and think of James Murphy

this is very xgau-esque in that I have no idea what that means

the most wounding thing you've ever written about me

Psychedelic Pill was kind of disappointing - a few great tracks (basically the epic ones), but I didn't think it was a great album. Tour was great though, glad I caught it.

Love Le Noise though. That and Americana were Neil's two great albums of the 2010s, IMHO.

inexcusable slander w/r/t Le Noise and Psychedelic Pill

These are the only post-95 Neil records I've heard, I liked a couple of tracks from each but mildly enough to think, "If this is the cream I can do without the rest for now". I'm a late adopter though, I just listened to Freedom for the first time this afternoon. I should get to Barn some time after I turn 80.

aw Alfred I'm sorry I'm being dickish

I have the impression that every time Neil Young releases a new album, it is to pretty positive reception, only for about everyone to forget about that album a year later and claim that none of his post 2010 (or even post 2000) work is worth much. I think it'll be the same with Barn, which on first listens sounds like continuing the overall sounds & quality of all of those records.
And those, I think, ARE good. Obviously not as overwhelmingly spectacular as 70s Neil. And the typical comfortable Neil song of these days might maybe be very good, but on the other hand also tends to not be overly memorable.

Psychedelic Pill is an obvious standout with it's lengthy stompers; I myself would name Storytone as a beautiful post-2010 highlight, but I don't see much wrong with Peace Trail, The Visitor or Colorado & now Barn - I enjoy them all a great deal.

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.