After The Gold Rush - Neil Young - album review

After recently writing blog posts about two of Neil Young's classic 1970s albums, I thought that I would take a look at the Canadian singer-songwriter's first effort of the decade, After The Gold Rush.

Commonly cited as Young's quintessential "singer-songwriter" LP, it is in fact quite a diverse and varied piece of work, containing many of the elements which have made his career so enduringly fascinating and unpredictable.

The album opens with "Tell Me Why", which contains ingredients from both Young's troubadour days, and also the style of Crosby Stills and Nash, with whom he had recently been collaborating when this was recorded. The vocal harmonies here are fragile and airy, and somewhat unique in flavour to After The Gold Rush.

The title track follows, and is one of those songs which was very much in keeping with the tenor of its time, hinting at apocalypse and subsequent rebirth.  Similar themes to Jackson Browne's "For Everyman" and "Wooden Ships" by CSN.

It is fair to say that many of the stronger compositions on this album are packed in at the start, and this is maintained with "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", which has become almost a standard because of many renditions by other artists. This original drifts by without drawing that much attention to itself, and is quite difficult to categorise and define, so I won't bother trying!

The track which aroused most discussion and debate was "Southern Man".  Apart from its socio-political message, this is a very powerful track musically, with perhaps the last major outing on record for some time of Young's idiosyncratic, brittle and meandering guitar style.  The piano-playing on this song is also sometimes forgotten, adding depth and helping to drive the melody along.

It has to be said that the remaining tracks are a mixed bag, two of them being brief and rather whimsical items, "Till The Morning Comes" and "Cripple Creek Ferry".  These, together with the perfunctory and incongruous cover of Don Gibson's "Oh Lonesome" Me, tend to belie the reputation of After The Gold Rush as a classic of its kind.  Whether Young was short on genuinely strong material around this time, it can only be speculated. Of course, some of his superior creations were being diverted to CSNY, and other projects.

These weaker links are balanced out by some memorable and beautiful moments towards the close of the album. "Birds" and "I Believe in You" are far from the most popularly revered songs here, but they both have charm and finesse, and have not suffered from the over-familiarity associated with the earlier "marquee" numbers. Again, piano is used to considerable effect on both of these songs.

After The Gold Rush is something of a hinge in this phase of Neil Young's journey, having a character of its own, but still showing the legacy of his early albums, and paving the way for the more "commercial" period, albeit relatively brief, on which he was about to embark.

Whilst there are some strong songs, and an appealing "organic" and sparse feel throughout, it has possibly been slightly over-rated. This was one of the first Neil Young albums which I listened to, and I judged it before exploring other areas of his catalogue. Once I had been exposed to Tonight's The Night and On The Beach, After the Gold Rush began to sound much tamer and anodyne; almost, but not quite, a case of treading water.

So even if the passage of time, and repeated exposure, dulls its impact, and makes it appear ever so slightly sterile, After The Gold Rush is still a great listen.

On The Beach - Neil Young - album review

Just recently, I blogged about Neil Young's classic 1975 album, Tonight's The Night:

Tonight's The Night - Neil Young


Habitually, another album is tied together with Tonight's The Night as representing a particular stage in the singer-songwriter's career. That album is On The Beach:

It is indeed tempting to lump these two albums together, but I think that this a simplistic way of looking at things. They are markedly dissimilar in musical terms, and the mood is subtly but importantly different.

For me, On The Beach has a certain automony within the Neil Young body of work, operating outside the frameworks of most of his other albums of that era. It is illustrative of his urge to continue his restless musical and philosophical journey, rather than rely on old formulae.

Whereas Tonight's The Night, which was recorded first, had a semblance of a common thread musically, On The Beach is quite diverse, and the palette is expanded to include relatively unusual instruments, such as electric piano, banjo and fiddle.  There is none of the redeeming jauntiness of whimsical bluesiness.  These songs are more brutal, and unsettling.  The fact that the songs are all "self-contained" adds to their potency.

On The Beach has an undercurrent of resignation and quiet despair, and there are lyrical references, oblique and otherwise, to Watergate and counter-cultural neuroses of the time. This is combined with examinations of the paths and lifestyles of the artist and his contemporaries.  A very apt document of its times, in many ways.

The stand out-tracks are "Revolution Blues", with its sinister and disturbing lyrics, the deceptive and under-estimated title track, and the closer "Ambulance Blues".  The latter is one of Young's real gems, harking back almost to his folk-troubadour days.

On The Beach was unavailable on CD for many years, and this helped to generate an air of mystique around it.  Whilst the reality could not really hope to match the mystique, it is a unique album, and one of Neil Young's most important releases.

Tonight's The Night - Neil Young - album review

Every so often, artists or groups opt to take what is perceived as a diversion in their career path, but sometimes this is quite calculating, and intended merely to enhance their degree of "hipness" and mainstream success.

In the case of Neil Young, following the colossal success of 1972's Harvest, he deliberately took a detour, not for any other reason but to explore new territory and escape the treadmill.  Perhaps the most authentic and compelling product of that decision was Tonight's The Night, recorded mostly in 1973, but not released until 1975.

In addition to a conscious desire to defy stagnation and convention, the music which Neil Young wrote and recorded around this time also clearly addresses the fall-out from the era just past, and its impact on rock culture. The deaths of Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry cast a shadow over this album in particular.

Throughout Tonight's The Night, the arrangements and performances are ragged and almost disjointed, contrasting sharply with much of the singer-songwriter's previous work.  As well as signifying an intentional stylistic departure, the basic bluesy approach perfectly complements the lyrical subject matter.

The instrumental hallmarks of the album are also fundamental to its artistic success.  Nils Lofgren's brittle but superbly evocative guitar work is often to the fore, as is the weeping pedal steel guitar of Ben Keith.  The latter, and Young's harmonica are, essential to the subdued mood of several tracks.  These element are supported by the redoubtable Crazy Horse rhythm section.

Neil Young's vocals are as ragged as the backing tracks, sloppy and haphazard, or more accurately perhaps a natural consequence of the turmoil contained in the words of the songs themselves. The croakier, harsher Young voice proves perfectly expressive here, and in keeping with the uncompromising central thrust of the work.  It is safe to assume that very few overdubs were performed during the sessions.  What would normally be seen as mistakes and blemishes were left in....

Despite the melancholy and often rancorous vibes, there is kind of nobility and defiance about Tonight's The Night, which for me is central to its appeal - a "ragged glory", to borrow from one of Neil's later album titles.  Some of the dark humour contained in the lyrics helps to encourage this feeling.

Three of the tracks, "Mellow My Mind", "Albuquerque" and "Tired Eyes", are quite similar in style and melody and, astutely separated, constitute the emotional backbone of the album, together with the bookends of the title track and its reprise.

For the unwary I would expect that Tonight's The Night is an awkward listen at first, and in this and other respects there are parallels with the Stones' Exile On Main Street.  However, as a snapshot of an artist's state of mind, and as a slice of raw emotional candour, this album has few equals in rock music.