Uncropped Image for Neil Young's Decade
by Tom Wilkes
(See Neil Young's Decade: The Images Behind The Album Cover
)
His approach is quite in
depth and a personal passion project. For this first
section, he explores "Half-Decade: A Comprehensive, Meticulous, and Flowing Account of Neil Young's Music from 1972-76." Still to come are reflections on The Old
Homestead and Walk-on discs. The intention is to publish a section for each full
moon July -- September.
Please let us know what you think of Meta
Rocker's submission!
Half-Decade: A Comprehensive, Meticulous, and Flowing Account of Neil Young's Music from 1972-76
by Metamorphic
Rocker
Part
I: Homegrown>Old
Homestead>Walk On
July
2021
Neil
Young's second Archives
compendium arrived more than ten years after the first.
It covers
half the time span of Vol. I (which runs from Neil's earliest known
1963 recordings to the commercial apogee of Harvest, released in
early '72). Arguably, though, Archives Vol. II compensates for
breadth with depth, offering (for this fan) about twice the value in
content of its precursor. This is a subjective take, however:
depending on which albums or epochs of Young's work you most
appreciate, the music may or may not be more rewarding than what Vol.
I offered. For deluxe bells and whistles, certainly, this 10-CD box
set does not match the original DVD or blu-ray editions of Vol I.
Essentially, the mass market release of Vol. 2 is equivalent to Vol
I.'s CD release: the economy edition. If one wanted all the
trimmings, one would’ve had to catch the limited edition released
last November exclusively through Neil Young's website at $250.00 a
pop.
Personally,
although I still love the big book that came with Vol I., I don't
mind not having to search for storage space for another file
cabinet-sized box. In most respects, and particularly for the
interests of the average consumer, the compact Vol 2 CD box is an
aesthetic and practical improvement in design. If anything, it makes
the Vol. I box look sprawling and clumsy by comparison. While I did
enjoy the immersive experience of Vol I (and the 1966-67 Buffalo
Springfield demos and outtakes in particular offer from pure gems),
this time they've cleaned up the formatting, making the package
sleeker at no cost to music quantity or quality.
This
review will be split into several installments, each concentrating
roughly three or four of the ten discs: one part will cover Crazy
Horse (Tonight’s
the Night/Roxy/Dume/Odeon-Budokan);
another for the Stray Gators (Everybody’s
Alone/Tuscaloosa)
plus the Stills/Young Band era (Look
Out for My Love);
and this, the first installment, which will focus on what amounts to
a bridge between Gators and Horse: the late “ditch” period
recordings documented on
Homegrown,
The
Old Homestead,
and
Walk On).
I prefer to start in the middle because Homegrown,
a “lost” album which was released on its own ahead of the box set
and is the only disc that was designed at the time of recording as a
cohesive album, is in many ways the core and lynchpin of this period
of Neil Young’s career, encompassing within a concise yet erratic
self-portrait all of the sounds, styles, and moods that haunt the
other discs in a less concentrated form. Homegrown,
in other words, captures the essence--the ethos and the flavor--of
the music Young was making in this period, and although at the time,
it was shelved in favor of Tonight’s
the Night,
it sounds remarkably like a melding of Harvest
and
On
the Beach. Interiority is
the word that comes to mind for this record. The tinkling piano of
"Mexico" is almost too beautiful and fragile, its lyric a
thin vapor trailing into the familiar weary twang of "Love is a
Rose". "Rose" and the closing "Star of Bethlehem"
(with Ben Keith’s sweet harmony vocal raised in the mix) are the
same recordings featured on Decade
and
American
Stars 'n' Bars,
just as the severely underrated "Little Wing" is the track
eventually released as Hawks
and Doves'
opener.
The album’s fragmentation is its cohesion, its patchwork flow of
loose ends and stray notes coming together as a vivid portrait of a
fractured, strained psyche. The looseness of recordings like
“Homegrown”, “We Don’t Smoke it”, “Florida” (featuring
only voice, piano strings, and wine glasses), and “Kansas”
perfectly evoke a sense of malaise and confusion that make this one
of Neil’s most enigmatic and deeply contemplative albums. A
fascinating aspect of Homegrown
that
has been overlooked is how its first half, in particular, mimics the
structure of Harvest’s
side one. Compare the doleful opener, “Separate Ways” (of which
more is to be said when we reach the Stills-Young disc) with “Out
on the Weekend”. Take the London Symphony off of “A Man Needs a
Maid” and end up with a song eerily close, in feeling and
structure, to “Mexico”. “Love is a Rose” is the would-be
single to follow up “Heart of Gold”, another country-inflected
anthem about searching restlessly for love.
***
Many thanks here Meta
Rocker! Indeed, a "Comprehensive, Meticulous, and Flowing Account!" Very much looking forward to future installments on Full Moons!
No problem on length or complexity. We're trying to make
this blog something along the lines of "anti-short attention
span" writing.
Enjoy and give Meta
Rocker some feedback!
Labels: neil young, neil young archives, nya
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