I made the mistake of trying to listen to this on my MP3 player after sorting for “album name” and got a mix of songs from Neil Young and the Offspring for my troubles. The CD in the car was far more reliable.
Disc 1962 is…Americana
Artist: Neil Young and Crazy Horse
Year of Release: 2012
What’s up with the Cover? What you see here is not the cover, but an artist’s rendering of turn of the century America on the inside fold of the CD jacket.
For the actual cover, Neil took a 1905 photo of Geronimo and some other First Nations and superimposed the faces of the band over top of them. Opinions no doubt vary on what Neil was intending here, but at minimum it could be triggering, and I’ve chosen to go in another direction. Forewarned, you can look it up elsewhere on the internet.
How I Came To Know It: This was just me giving Neil a chance based on previous positive experiences. I was learning around this time to be more discerning with which Neil Young albums were worth my time.
How It Stacks Up: Neil Young has released 45 albums over his long and illustrious career, but I don’t have all of ‘em and I don’t like all of ‘em. I have at one time or another owned (and reviewed) 23 albums. This is the last one left, and I rank it…21st. So, not good.
Ratings: 2 stars
As this is the final Neil Young record in my collection, here is the full and exhaustive recap of all 23 (read them all here). Enjoy and/or seethe with disagreement as the mood strikes you:
- Harvest: 5
stars (reviewed at Disc 1877)
- Rust Never Sleeps: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 664)
- On the Beach: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 579)
- Everybody Knows
This Is Nowhere: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 497)
- After the Gold
Rush: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 1450)
- Hawks &
Doves: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 188)
- Prairie Wind: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 160)
- Le Noise: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 403)
- Hitchhiker: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 1158)
- Chrome Dreams II: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 1196)
- Harvest Moon: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 257)
- Comes a Time*: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 883)
- Homegrown: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 1604)
- Freedom: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 1750)
- Sleeps With
Angels: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 20)
- Ragged Glory: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 730)
- Tonight’s the
Night: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 422)
- Self-Titled: 3
stars (reviewed at Disc 435)
- Everybody’s
Rockin’: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 914)
- America Stars ‘n’
Bars: 2 stars (reviewed at Disc 855)
- Americana: 2 stars (reviewed right here)
- Colorado: 2 stars (reviewed at Disc 1809)
- A Letter Home: 1 star (reviewed at Disc 850)
· *I was probably a bit harsh on “Comes a Time” at three stars, and it likely should be higher on the list, but a star laid is a star played…
Before we launch into “Americana” let the record above show that I’m not one of those “I only like his early stuff” jerks, and there have been plenty of records (well, five) that Neil put out after 2005 that are solid records.
But it is also true that later Neil has doubled down on doing whatever the hell he wants. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. On “Americana” it doesn’t.
“Americana” sees the return of Neil’s backing band Crazy Horse, whose presence is almost guaranteed to make a record grimier. When these folks get together with Neil everything tends to get drawn out a bit longer with a lot more reverb on the guitar.
Given that this record is a collection of re-imagined old classic American folk songs, I was hopeful that this would mean that some of the “lost” lyrics of standards like “Clementine” and “Oh Susannah” would make an appearance. Some of those lyrics make these old songs even darker and creepier than they already are. To some degree, this hope was rewarded, particularly on these two tracks.
However, Crazy Horse mostly used the extra time to “explore the space” with a lot of not very inventive jam-session style grooves that were equal parts self-indulgent and unimaginative.
The further I went into the record the more irritating this long, drawn-out “go nowhere” vibe became. If the song is going to be five plus minutes long, I want most of that time exploring the various lost stanzas of these classics, not a bunch of hot-boxed, blue haze studio wankery.
Whether you’re covering a song from two, twenty, or two hundred years ago, the unspoken rule of the exercise is well understood: make it original and do it well.
For most of this record, Neil and Crazy Horse only manage the first half of that social contract. Yes, these sound original, but they are mostly deliberately messy dive-bar renditions. If that’s what you want with your timeless folk classics, you might like – even love – this record. I thought it was just a lot of doubling down on an idea that was good for a couple of songs (both of which I’ve already mentioned) but not for a whole record that approaches a full hour of playing time.
“Tom Dula” is a particularly good example of the excess, with eight full minutes that go nowhere special and travel there in the loudest manner possible. The song features plenty of Neil Young’s exceptional guitar playing, but I kept waiting for the song to have a purpose, and it never did. Instead all the layers of improvisation just caked an otherwise interesting tale with a thick layer of sonic mud.
Half-way through the record you get a listless version of “Get a Job,” lurching like Frankenstein’s Monster through a song designed to be lively and full of jump. I found myself wishing this song had instead appeared on Neil’s 1983 rockabilly record “Everybody’s Rockin’.
As a fan of folk music history, there was a part of me that was just happy to have all these old songs, but then I realized that over the years I had many of them by other artists. A quick search of my music catalogue revealed many a gem (“Oh Susannah” – the Be Good Tanyas and the Byrds; “Gallow’s Pole” – Led Zeppelin; “This Land Is Your Land” – Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings; “Wayfarin’ Stranger” – Emmylou Harris; and “God Save the Queen” – Queen).
Young’s version of “Wayfarin’ Stranger” (where he finally tones it down) is pretty solid but he’s no Emmylou…
At the end of the otherwise brilliant version of “Clementine” you can hear a member of the band say, “I thought we shoulda gone back to the F sharp minor”. It’s the kind of conversation you might have with your buddies while jamming, but it isn’t something worth recording.
Which, sadly, is how I felt about large chunks of this record.
Best tracks: Oh Susannah, Clementine, Wayfarin’ Stranger
