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Rating: "Arc" is the conclusion of that "feedback trilogy" which in the early 90s brings Neil Young's myth back to its peak among the rock nation. If the explosive "Ragged Glory" confirms that his compositional inspiration has not waned and the massive "Weld" allows him to compare his cacophonous and distorted Crazy Horse-branded guitar rock litany with the evolutions of his protégés from the Sonic Youth-Dinosaur Jr generation, it's up to "Arc" to close the circle and represent the old Canadian lion's most genuinely experimental and noisy soul.
Initially attached to "Weld", this project is composed of a single, long piece that in 34 minutes offers an intense collage taken from the same tour with Sonic Youth captured by "Weld". An idea born from a discussion with Thurston Moore in those days of '91, "Arc" collects the attacks and improvised endings of legendary battle horses like "Like a Hurricane". All, to use Young's own words, rendered "fuckin' distorted to hell". It's the exoskeleton of that feverishly loud sound that Neil invented, turned into a fetish and which is about to dominate in the grunge era.
"Arc" thus constitutes more than just a simple divertissement, or yet another whim of a notoriously inscrutable artist, bordering on paranoia. Under the swirling dissonant layers that seem to best represent that modern urban alienation of which he has often been a troubled singer, Young confirms he was not only an unparalleled songwriter but also a shrewd handler of sounds (how can we forget "Trans" after all: as disputable and messy as one might say, but which I find morbidly irresistible), in a skewed journey towards the avant-garde that will find its most perfect realization in 1996 with the sidereal gusts of "Dead Man".
Tracklist
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