Neil Young
Silver & Gold

There are few works by Neil Young left to comment on, and among them, 'Silver & Gold' is one of the most valid.

In the last ten years, from 'Sleep With Angels' onwards, Young's long journey has been characterized by many decent albums and no peaks. Neil's songwriting vein, as we know, follows the time and seasons of life; Crazy Horse is one of those songwriters who have been able to develop their music according to experience, soul's suggestions, their own journey. Young's work can never be understood and lived other than as a mirror of the Author's very existence.

Choosing among the varied works produced in the last decade, today my finger points to 'Silver & Gold,' a soft, pastel-colored, intimate, and autumnal album. We speak of Neil Young the bucolic singer, of Neil solitary and contemplative, absorbed and finally enwrapped in nature itself, in the landscape. This is what 'Silver & Gold' is, the best country album in a long time, better even than 'Prairie Wind', an album of suggestions and images, of memories and open views over fields, outside the window. Outside that window, from the window beyond which, thirty years ago, in "Words," they turned the soil, plowed the fields. It's the same landscape of 'Harvest', this is the landscape of the perceived, or just imagined Younghian countryside, now seen with a more mature gaze and no longer with the eyes of the young Loner; now Neil is the same Old Man he sang about years ago, now his gaze benevolently follows the lines of the horizon, now his guitar sounds more relaxed, his words flow more calm and simple.

It's pointless to critique a Young album; frankly, you could find a thousand faults in this bucolic work, you could argue about its partiality, its ephemeral nature, its empty content, but it's unnecessary. You might object that this album adds nothing and takes nothing away from Young's work, that, after all, Neil is once again offering us the same refined broth, just slightly reheated; but music, fortunately, is not a mere product to be consumed at the table of intellect, it cannot be just a taste for technique and writing, music pertains to an eminently emotional, sometimes even spiritual sphere of man, and those who can no longer discern the two aspects forfeit a large part of the dishes that music serves, the refreshment notes have provided mankind since the dawn of time. Faced with such fragile and emotional songwriting, even if no longer innovative, one can be carried away, put down the pen, rise from the chair, go outside, take the brown path that leads to the hills, outside, among the scent of must and the damp banks of grass, before the landscape of soft, yet vivid hues that this album sketches for us, in the autumnal air of this middle season, before static suggestions, naive memories, and children's games.

Neil Young's songs are eminent introspective songs, they have something that binds them indissolubly to the soul, to the nature of man, to the nature of the world. They are internal, but of a universal interiority, and even when bent to protest themes, material, political, they are always presented in a purely internal, personal manner (for example, think of the environmentalism in 'Natural Beauty' and 'Mother Anthem'). Sure, naivety, naturalness, simplicity are not values recognized today, just as traditional tone and analog sounds. This is precisely Neil Young's heresy, this is his quest, far from any flow or trend, from any pre-established judgment.

Neil Young's records and stories trace paths in search of the Absolute, of the first principles, of values that, to borrow from Rousseau, "pertain to human nature", to primordial and free simplicity. That is why that restless spirit fascinates us so much: it renews in our dry hearts the vein of blood, the sense of true Freedom that lies in inner exploration, in doubt, in becoming. Neil rides intimately the need for the Absolute, residing in maximum naturalness, in the absence of superstructures, in its simple complexity, in being the new engaged knight, against windmills, in a battle that satisfies him, somewhat stoically, just for the mere fact of being waged.

After boring you with a personal reading of Neil's work, entirely debatable and partial, for the sake of completeness, I remind you that this album, in its initial project, shone with even more splendor. It is known that some of the best songs originally composed for this album (Lookin' Forward and Out of Control, just to name two) were donated to the cause of the "reunion" album between Stills and Young released the same year, a few months before 'Silver & Gold' (you can find all the songs composed during that period on the 'Silver & Gold' DVD, where Neil plays all pieces of the album, in addition to some classics from the past, voice and guitar; truly a good concert).

Final interesting note, as testimony to the happy compositional period that characterized the contrary belief during the '80s, the title track of the album and Razor Love, two of the best of the entire work, were composed for the first draft of Old Ways and, at a later time, saved from that merciless hoax. The song Without Rings, touching album closure, was recorded by an exhausted and voiceless Neil Young returning from the Mirror Ball tour held with Pearl Jam.