The Stills-Young Band
Long May you Run

LA RECENSIONE

In '76 Neil Young and his old friend Stephen Stills met again in the studio to record this little-known album, which diverges considerably from the sounds that the two had accustomed us to with Buffalo Springfield and the CSN&Y quartet.

Instrumentally speaking, it is certainly not a masterpiece, although the sound is still clean, well-played, and easy to listen to. Being a great admirer of Young, I cannot deny that I focused more on listening to the tracks he wrote, as they are more poetic and, in a certain sense, closer to the standards that the Canadian usually produces.

It is still evident the difference in sound between the tracks of the two authors, Stills's part (which includes "Make Love To You", "Black CORAL", "12/8 BLUES"—certainly the best of the bunch, and "Guardian Angel") is more "blues-oriented", while Young takes a more sentimental path with a pleasant piece like "Midnight on the Bay" which vaguely recalls the sounds of "On the Beach" without having the same philosophical content, the cheerful "Ocean Girl" characterized by a pleasant singing, the evergreen "Long May You Run", which Young himself has revisited multiple times in many Live shows and in "Unplugged" of '93, and finally two tracks, "Let It Shine" and "Fontainebleau", which sound like songs, still tamed in sound, that could easily have appeared on the dark yet splendid "Tonight's The Night".

In conclusion, even though it is not an essential album, it appears overall to be of decent quality and a couple of Young's tracks could enter a hypothetical "Best of" (but certainly not a "Very Best").