Tuesday, September 16, 2014

CD Odyssey Disc 664: Neil Young

The Odyssey keeps trucking along. Five years in with no end in sight, I sometimes wonder why I’m doing this (hint: it is neither money nor fame). Then I remember three good reasons.

First, this continues to be a great way for me to reacquaint myself with music in my collection, and by forcing myself to write a little about it, pay more attention to some of it than I have in the past.

Second, it gives me a joy in something as simple as walking to and from work, and ensures I’m aware for the experience. Sometimes it even makes me more aware of my surroundings; the music paints a soundtrack over everything and makes all the colour that much more vibrant, all the movement of the city that much more like an elegant dance.

Finally, this is like a massive audio sand mandala. Even if I never finish, it is a meditative exercise to just go through all my records, taking each as it comes without worrying if there is some greater purpose. In some ways, I hope I never finish.

Disc 664 is…. Rust Never Sleeps
Artist: Neil Young & Crazy Horse

Year of Release: 1979

What’s up with the Cover?  An honest picture of what it’s like to watch a concert from the nose bleed section. With a few exceptions I associate stadium rock with bad views and inferior sound. I’ll take a smaller venue every time I can get it.

How I Came To Know It:  I knew a bunch of these songs as covers by other artists, so it was a pretty safe way to increase my Neil Young collection.

How It Stacks Up:  Speaking of my Neil Young collection, I now have twenty of his albums (I recently purchased two newer ones, which I’ll talk about when I roll them). Given that he’s got 34 studio albums, that’s not so many but I’ve pretty much got what I want from his collection at this point. Of the twenty, “Rust Never Sleeps” is way up there. I’m going to say it is #2, although “Comes A Time” and “On the Beach” are also amazing and in the conversation for the silver.

Rating: 4 stars

Like “Hawks & Doves” (reviewed way back at Disc 188) “Rust Never Sleeps” is a tale of two albums, fused together in a way that feels simultaneously awkward and beautiful.

The first five songs are performed acoustic, with a small accompanying band. They are Neil on his folksy side. This is introspective Neil, really drilling down into himself, calm and fearless in a way that is very hard to maintain when you’re really looking deep.

The album’s second track, “Thrasher” is my favourite surprise on the album. The song’s title refers to the big grain harvest thrashers on farms, but the song is really about embracing idealism. The narrator of the song loses a lot of friends as a result and finds himself heading out west to find like-minded spirits, as Neil eloquently puts it:

“It was then I knew I’d had enough, burned my credit card for fuel
Headed out to where the pavement turns to sand
With a one-way ticket to the land of truth and my suitcase in my hand
How I lost my friends I still don’t understand.”

Sail Away” and “Ride My Llama” have that languorous hippy-in-the-sun vibe that Neil does better than anyone. When you hear him sing like this, it’s like he’s sitting around a beach fire, sandals on his dirty feet and hair hanging in his eyes.

The two songs I knew already were “Pocahontas” and “Powderfinger,” and both because I had originally heard them as covers that I thought were originals at the time.

Crash Vegas do a great rocking job of “Pocahontas” on their 1995 album “Aurora” (reviewed back at Disc 440) and it is different enough that I can love both it and Neil’s folksy version equally.

The same goes for “Powderfinger” which I first heard on the 1990 Cowboy Junkies album, “The Caution Horses” (reviewed at Disc 155). Like Crash Vegas, Cowboy Junkies are Canadian, and together they show the huge influence Neil has had on music up here north of the 48th parallel. In the case of “Powderfinger” it is Neil’s version that is more rocking, appearing on Side Two, where Neil abandons the smaller set up and brings in Crazy Horse and an electric guitar to rock out.

Neil’s ability to drag a melody through feedback is on fine display throughout the side and it shows that while this record was inspiring alt-rock in Canada ten years later, it was simultaneously helping give birth to the grunge movement in the United States.

Powderfinger” is my favourite song on “Rust Never Sleeps” but the electric approach to Side Two isn’t quite as strong as the acoustic start. “Welfare Mothers” is pretty jumpy and fun, but “Sedan Delivery” is a bit too aimless and punk for me. That said, it is nice to see if Neil feels like it, he can play a punk song as effortlessly as any other style he chooses.

The album is bookended by the acoustic “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)” and the equally awkwardly titled electric “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black),” both of which are great and (I believe) give us the now famous line “better to burn out than to fade away.” They are basically the same song, with a different treatment, showing a powerful melody shines through every time. Together they tie the whole record together

In fact throughout the record, Neil is laying down folk, rock, punk rock, or grunge, all the songs feel like they fit together even when logic says they shouldn’t. Every one of Neil’s albums has some beautiful and grotesque flaw in them that makes them strangely better. “Rust Never Sleeps” just does it better than most.


Best tracks: My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue), Thrasher, Ride My Llama, Pocahontas, Sail Away, Powderfinger

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