On a
positive note, of the 23 Neil Young records I own or have owned, I only ever
parted with three of them. This next album is one of the unlucky ones.
Disc 1809 is…Colorado
Artist: Neil Young and Crazy Horse
Year of Release: 2019
What’s up with the Cover? The shadowy figure of Neil Young lurks here, alongside an artistic rendition of a soundwave (or maybe a seismic wave) and an upside-down horse. Why is that horse upside down, you ask? It’s CRAZY!
As for the shadowy figure, perhaps he’s come back from the grave. If he did it proves you can’t take much when you crossover into the afterlife, but they will allow a hat.
How I Came To Know It: Back in 2019 I was still trying out pretty much every album Neil Young put out. I bought this one without listening to it first.
How It Stacks Up: I have (or have had) 23 Neil Young albums, and I’ve gotten rid of two. “Colorado” makes for a third, coming in at a lowly and generally unloved #22.
Ratings: 2 stars, but just barely
Neil Young is old, rich, and talented, and he does whatever the hell he wants with that talent. I applaud his approach to art, and most of the time what he does is amazing. Sometimes, like in the case of “Colorado” it falls flat. So flat it irritates me.
Neil won’t care that I feel this way, and I hope the many people who positively reviewed this record won’t care either, but A Creative Maelstrom is one man’s opinion. And in my opinion, this record is a bloated mess.
Irritating and insufferably droning was how I experienced “Colorado”, mostly while fidgeting in the seat of my car and glancing over and over again at the stereo’s display screen and wondering “how much longer…” for almost every song.
After a passible old hippy tune (“Think of Me”) got me cautiously optimistic, things went off the cliff and stayed down there in the ravine for a long time. “She Showed Me Love” is the most painful of the record’s many painful tracks. At almost 14 interminable minutes long, this song drones and noodles its way along, with most of the tune being Neil singing the track’s title over and over again.
You know how a catchy song can become an earworm long after it is over? Well, “She Showed Me Love” defies logic by making a not very catchy song into an earworm, just by sheer force of repetition. Long after this tune mercifully faded into the aether, I was left with that damned phrase ringing in my head.
I should note that “She Showed Me Love” is a song about the importance of our natural environment, so there’s a positive underlying message. “Colorado” is mostly songs about environmental or social justice, but the topic isn’t what makes for a good song. There are plenty of great protest albums out there delivered by some of music’s greatest: Woody Guthrie, Steve Earle, Billy Bragg and Neil Young himself on multiple occasions. This just ain’t one of them.
Instead this record feels rambling and unfocused, as though Neil thought the topic choice alone was enough and then was content to turn things loose to Crazy Horse to noodle around with presumably bottomless studio time as they saw fit.
Some of that noodling hints at Young’s greatness, particularly his talent on the guitar. The grimy and yearning tone Young pulls out of a guitar is singular, instantly recognizable and beautiful. He is one of music’s least appreciated but great axemen. “Colorado” also welcomes back fellow guitar legend Nils Lofgren to Crazy Horse for the first time since the early seventies, and his work and talents are also welcome.
But tone and talent only go so far, and saturating the production with a wall of noise may work for Crazy Horse much of the time, but here it just felt self-indulgent and inchoate. Ideas are started and then left to wander like unruly children at a mall food court, bumping into stuff, dropping food on the floor or wandering up to your table to stare at you too long from close range. Go back to your table, kid, and take that song with you.
People who’ve read me for a long time will know that while I have a very wide range of musical styles I enjoy, across them all I have a bias for clean production and simple arrangements. I wear this bias on my sleeve and make no secret of it. So that’s one big reason this record annoyed me, and if you like a saturated wall of sound type thing, then that criticism for you might be an invitation to something you’ll enjoy. Fair enough.
Near the end of the record, we once again get an uplift with “Rainbow of Colours.” In addition to a lovely message of tolerance and acceptance this song marries that guitar tone I lauded earlier to a lovely lilting melody that makes it easy to sway along. It is the structure I was missing through most of the record, but it came too late in my listening experience to save the day.
As for the majority of this record, it can ramble its way out of my collection to someone who will enjoy it more than I did – that will not be a hard person to find.
Best tracks: Think of Me, Rainbow of Colours
No comments:
Post a Comment