these are the reviews I like: passion, expertise, emotion, I love the use of the 2nd person singular, it adds an extra touch of personality, a great model to emulate, compliments! Unfortunately, Neil Young is a big gap in my knowledge; I only know him very superficially for now. As soon as that folk vein comes back to me, I will gladly delve deeper into his work.
Did you stop buying the records of Giovane Nello after "Ragged Glory"?...and you made a mistake, a biiiiig mistake...there are tons of great things from our guy both in the '90s and in the third millennium, trust me!
Except for the period of "Freedom"-"Sleeps with Angels" (89-94), I pretty much snubbed Young after "Hawks & Doves" (1980). Too disconnected from his usual style, I just couldn't fully digest it. As a result, I stopped following him in the 2000s. Definitely something to revisit.
Good job, a knowledgeable and well-written review. I haven't listened to the album yet, but I've heard Re-ac-tor and Landing On Water, which have put me off for now.
Great review, I appreciate particularly the fact that, while your words reveal a strong attachment to the artist, you remain objective and not one of those fanatics who exalt as masterpieces anything produced by their favorites. I only know a few of his tracks, I find him nice but he’s not within my musical coordinates.
Neil Young? What can I say... Immense in the 60s-70s, a bit inconsistent but generally excellent in the 80s, from the 90s onwards, as passionate and credible as he may be, he’s really not quite the same as before (and I would even include Ragged Glory, which I think is very overrated, among the mediocre and uninspired albums of recent decades). However, after over twenty years of music at that level, it’s a bit merciless to expect him to still be original and to create masterpieces. His albums may no longer be exceptional, but there's always something good (I recently listened to Living With War and appreciated it). This too shows the greatness of an artist, and he is among the greatest! Great review.
All true. Ultimately, through ups and downs, it's one of his best albums. Anyway, it may be the same chord progression, but Beautiful Bluebird is one of those ballads that very few in the world could write, and many, but really many, would have liked to write.
Thank you guys! Actually, Neil, I never completely stopped following him, and this album proves it. Rather, I diluted the purchase of his albums from the '90s and '00s... after Ragged Glory, I enjoyed Harvest Moon, the underrated Broken Arrow, and I didn't dislike Prairie Wind from 2003 too much either... however, overall, this is perhaps the most complete and successful work I've found in the last two decades, even if it’s definitely not one of his masterpieces; it can still rank among his best works. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the next album with the Crazy Horse that we should see in the coming months…
What can I say? Let’s not ignore things from the 90s like Harvest Moon, damn. It would be a shame to overlook it. You can't talk about "evolution" from the sixties to today because, well, we know it: Neil Young has always been himself from the beginning to the end. The evolution might have been more in the 80s with those strange but interesting albums like Re-actor and the fact of using Crazy Horse live with that electricity. His evolution has been in the ideas, in my opinion: from the destruction of rock and roll to social commitment, with elegance and talent. Now, perhaps he focuses a bit more on elegance by re-presenting old melodies with acoustic guitars and intelligent lyrics. I mean, can we argue with him? Isn’t this what people still listen to today: all this passion for indie acoustic (Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Iron and Wine)? I do, and the legacy he leaves us is not bad at all. Let’s hope he continues to make records and that they are all enjoyable, even if he repeats himself.
I suggest, speaking of steel guitar, acoustics, and simple sounds, the excellent "silver and gold," one of my absolute favorites from the 2000s, I believe.
oh finally someone who thinks like me (Silver&Gold, one of the best albums of the 2000s by Nello)...it comforts me that it's someone who says it with that avatar (meaning someone who has probably digested the Canadian material well and not the usual last-minute bulimic)
It would be nice if the maximum expert on the subject, namely Your Lonerity DonJunio, came by to share his thoughts... I wonder what he would think about those who rate Nello degli Ottanta (Trans! Old Ways!! Landing on Water!!!!...) as moderately excellent compared to a Ragged Glory (rated mediocre). And if the world isn't beautiful because it's varied...;))
@imasoulman: you’re right to comfort yourself. That record has a stunning production, stripped-down arrangements of songs that, as you know, were partially written on unreleased material from the seventies. The album comes out with Neil's voice devastated from the previous and (perhaps overly) grandiloquent tour, which makes this one so calm and relaxing. The lyrics are magnificent and the pieces are sincere and straightforward, certainly filled with melancholy as well. Sometimes it’s a matter of taste: those tracks sound as direct and sincere to me as those from Re-actor, even though I understand it's a comparison between apples and oranges given the type of music. After all, who would have ever thought that a piece like Sample and Hold could belong to the same Neil Young with the cowboy hat, searching for the right harmonica before "Heart of Gold" in 1971... and yet... it is so. His expressive power is such that, upon reflection, he is ultimately a great experimenter. This note's for you with the bluesy jazz musicians and even Sonic Youth touring alongside him…
So, Zzot, I really appreciate your opinion. And I’ll tell you more, I want to listen to Silver And Gold, it intrigues me quite a bit. That said, I’ll tell you what - I fear - I won’t like: the production. Yes, if there's one thing that leaves me a bit bitter about Neil's albums in recent years, it’s precisely the production, too polished and glossy for my taste. I definitely adore the non-productions of On the Beach, American Stars'n'bars, or Rust Never Sleeps, or the very "moderate" ones of Everybody Knows and After the Gold Rush. Perhaps, and I say this to complete the review, one of the reasons I appreciated this Chrome Dreams II is the presence of those fundamental elements from my (I repeat, mine, not everyone’s) favorite Neil albums: nicely rounded songs and a production kept to a minimum, with a couple of exceptions that are also the least successful moments of the album, but in the end they still fit!
This is a good record, pleasantly schizophrenic as it gathers tracks from different periods and created or performed with different backing bands (International Harvesters, Bluetones, Crazy Horse of course). The three highlights of the bunch, "beautiful bluebird," "Boxcar," and "ordinary people," are also the ones pulled from the distant past. "Silver and Gold," like "Prairie Wind," is yet another refined reimagining of the archetype of "Harvest" and touches the hearts of us nostalgics, but like all greats, Nello is capable of rereading his own code, giving it a new refraction each time. Unfortunately, after Ben Keith's death, it will be very difficult for him to produce something new in that vein. There would be enough material for a novel about Nello's '80s, with personal struggles, battles with record labels, political acrobatics, and stylistic shifts providing plenty of inspiration. However, Reactor, Trans, and This Note's for You are significant works, and even in the less successful albums like "Everybody's rocking" or "Old ways," Nello puts down gems like "Payola Blues" or "Misfits." Long may you run, Neil.
I also think that much of Neil's work from the 80s isn't so bad after all; perhaps schizophrenic, not at the same level as the previous decade, but creatively an engaging and surprising journey.
It took just a couple of lines about Nello to catch you off guard, huh? ;)) An analyst, in my opinion, wouldn’t have trouble defining Neil’s Eighties as "artistic schizophrenia," but from that decade, aside from Freedom, there’s just a bit of Reactor and precisely the beautiful Payola Blues you mentioned (Trans continues to be indigestible for me, while This Note's for You simply doesn’t seem like his album...). As for the Nineties (including Broken Arrow), it is once again a Crazy Horse in a state of grace for me (confirmed by the milanese visit during the Harvest Moon tour, I think it was '93). Opinions...
A bit of a scattered record for the reasons already mentioned in comment n°18. Nonetheless, it's a great listen. It's impossible to imagine a world without Neil Young.
One of the best reviews I've had the pleasure of reading! A very heterogeneous album and as such subject to highs and lows, not too high and not too low... the assessment of this is consistent and falls in the average.
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