It hasn’t been a good month for my
relationship with Neil Young with the second straight review resulting in one
of his albums leaving my collection.
Disc 855 is….America Stars ‘n’ Bars
Year of Release: 1977
What’s up with the Cover? Here’s an interesting factoid
from Wikipedia (which is never wrong): this cover was designed by actor Dean
Stockwell. Based on this example Dean should stick to acting. We get a glimpse
of Neil’s head, a shot up a woman’s skirt, a bottle of booze and some kind of
urn or spittoon all leading to the inevitable question, “why?”
I
usually opt for the alternative cover on this record:
Some
First Nations imagery combined with majestic mountains. It isn’t a great cover
either, but it is a hell of a lot better than what’s behind Door #1.
How I Came To Know It: I recently was fleshing out my
Neil Young album and I bought “Chrome Dreams II,” “Comes A Time” and this album.
As Bad Santa teaches us, “they can’t all be winners, kid.”
How It Stacks Up: With the recent exit of “A Letter Home” from
my collection of Neil Young has now shrunk to 19 albums. Of these I’ll put “America
Stars ‘n’ Bars” in 19th, or the new last place.
Ratings: 2 stars
“America Stars ‘n’ Bars” is a rambling collection of
songs that isn’t sure what it wants to be. It isn’t bad so much as it is
unfocused. It’s like a kid that switches his major too often, and then just
drops out of college to hitchhike across America.
The record didn’t anger or frustrate me like “A
Letter Home” did, and there aren’t any songs I can point to with any great
ill-will. At the same time, there aren’t enough songs that catch my attention
and make me want to hear more.
“Hey Babe”
has a nice rolling flow, and “Hold Back the
Tears” has a pretty country twang that feels like a gentle summer song, but
neither one stands out as brilliant either. Neil writes songs like this without
effort, but on “America Stars ‘n’ Bars” it is like peeking behind the curtain
to see him doing it easily. The record lacks…edge.
“Bite the
Bullet” is one of the stronger tracks, and also one of the more rockin’
songs, full of sexual innuendo and driving energy. The guitar on this track is
also great, with that trademark grimy sound that Neil and Crazy Horse can
always muster. As an aside this is a totally different track from Motorhead's song of the same name. I know, hard to believe, but true.
I also enjoyed “Homegrown,”
another rock song this time about good ol’ seventies grass. Again, the rock
guitar is great and generally the rock songs on the album are better than the
softer more introspective folk-driven tracks.
The worst of the softer tracks is the meandering
seven minute “Will to Love” which
takes forever to not get very far at all. The song includes a recording of a
crackling fire that made me think of the Shaw Cable channel “Log” that they put
on during the holiday season. In the video, the local cable company broadcasts a looped recording of a fireplace as a sort of public
service to those of us not lucky enough to have the real thing.
“Will to Love”
is similar to “Log” in that it is pleasant enough to enjoy for a few minutes,
but you get quickly bored waiting for something to happen. The song meanders
around a bit and never quite gets to the point. At one point Neil even sings:
“Sometimes I ramble on and on
And I repeat myself until all my
friends are gone.”
With these lines Neil gives a voice to the problem I
have with the song and more generally, the album. It isn’t that it is bad, it
is that I want it to be better.
It might be the residual effects of “A Letter Home”
working on me, but despite the good qualities of this record I’m going to part
company with it as well. As Dr. Seuss might say, “I can lick 18 Neil Young albums today!”
Best
tracks: Bite the Bullet, Homegrown
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