Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Year Of The Horse

It was 1997 when this official double live album by Neil with Crazy Horse was released: after the "mystical" experience that "Weld" of '91 had offered me, I hoped I could relive the same feeling of "elevation" in this case: Mr. Disappointment.

The album is tired, lackluster rhythm even in songs like "When you dance", "Mr. Soul", and "Human Highway"; then again, the concerts come from the tour done after the release of "Broken Arrow", one of Young's albums that left me more perplexed, moreover, I can say that it's the album that least entices me to listen: "Big Time", present here, and "Music Arcade", the only two decent songs, deserved a much better placement.

The Live also includes a song from "Life" ("When your lonely heart breaks") from the Geffen years, and it indeed fully recalls the "synthesized" sounds of the period, in the sense that there was no reinterpretation of the song in a "Youngian" key but a mere re-execution exactly like the '87 album. "Bastools Blues" and "Danger Bird" from the excellent "Zuma" lack their crystalline strength, the second, in particular, seems difficult to execute even by the author himself, whereas "Pocahontas" would certainly have been better in an acoustic version, as the rock arrangement loses much of the piece's poetry.

We return to "Broken Arrow" with the ballad "SlipAway" and "Scattered", the first overrated by many fans but which I personally find somewhat of a whine similar to "Loose Change" which fortunately is absent here. The only two noteworthy tracks for me are "Prisoners", the most enjoyable song from "Life" played in a tight and improvised manner as it should be, and "Sedan Delivery", Neil Young's punk song par excellence, here revisited and played truly impeccably with a really great performance, which concludes the album.

The impression this Live gave me is that of an album released "just because," in the sense that the lineup doesn't include performances played with the usual class nor the Musts that always do well for live albums; moreover, the recordings are always approximate (as I've already pointed out for the "Road Rocks" Live), as if to highlight the fact that there was no real intention to release these performances. Even the tracks listed on the back cover are in random order, in short, Neil does everything to upset his fans: "damn it" there are two or three pieces I'd like to hear again, and I can't figure out if they're on the first or the second CD! In short, dust off "Weld" and enjoy Neil Young & Crazy Horse.

Here it seems more like listening to "Neil Old & Dummy Mule."