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In a posting on Times-Contrarian | Neil Young Archives, Neil Young writes that he's considering releasing all unreleased album projects for subscribers well in advance of their normal physical releases.
In response to a NYA Letter to the Editor by Uncle Eddie -- who is concerned about living long enough to ever hear the unreleased albums by Neil Young -- Neil reflects on his aging fan base and what to do.
Neil writes that he is looking to accomplish releasing everything in 2020.
And in other Neil Young news in the same A MESSAGE FROM NEIL, he writes about adjusting Hearse theater schedules and "The Facebook Dilemma".
Regarding "The Facebook Dilemma", Neil helpfully offers instructions on how to delete your Facebook account. Likewise, TW helpfully offers a "How To" video on how to delete your Facebook account.
"It is not easy to disengage, but it is possible." - Neil
Comments were in the usual range of "great" to "mediocre" as has been the case consistently since we started this blog back in 1996. The man just can't seem to ever escape his back catalog legacy of the string of 1970's classic which now stands as his career benchmark. So what about other critics on the album 'Colorado' by Neil Young & Crazy Horse?
"I want it up as loud as it can go!" - Neil
Neil Young & Crazy Horse in the Studio
(Frame via film Mountaintop)
The record’s title, Nils Lofgren said, came later, after Crazy Horse had done its part. There were other working titles, including the idea of borrowing titles from some of the songs on the album.
“I think he settled on ‘Colorado’ after going through a few titles and realizing since that’s where we were, and it was such a special gathering,” Lofgren said. “It was also kind of neat, too, because there was just this great vibe where you kind of felt like the place was ours. This beautiful setting. There weren’t a lot of people around, and we just got to focus on the music. It was a beautiful studio.”
Like the best Crazy Horse records, Colorado balances the heavier tracks with slower, more introspective songs. “Milky Way” is one of the most beautiful, tender songs that Young has recorded in the last 30 years. Characterized by understated, yearning guitar and naked vocals, it is the album’s strongest track. “Green Is Blue,” a plea for preserving nature that is much more subtle than similar songs Young has written in recent years, is simple, understated, and lovely. Instead of pointing fingers, he plaintively sings “There’s so much we didn’t do / that we knew we had to do.” It’s the kind of intimate song — with only a vintage piano accompanying his vocals — he has always excelled at.
For a guy with his heart in the right place, it’s ironic that the weakest songs on the record are the overtly political ones. Where “Milky Way” and “Green Is Blue” succeed because of the element of human frailty that Young incorporates into the lyrics, “Shut It Down” and “Rainbow of Colors” sound more like diatribes and are not nearly as powerful, though I agree with everything he’s singing about.
There are several other pretty ballads on “Colorado,” balanced by a few electric excursions, notably the 13-minute “She Showed Me Love.” From the first note, there’s no mistaking that craggy guitar, the rise-and-fall pulse, the hypnotic fade into nothingness that suggests the song never really ends. In many ways, the Young-Crazy songbook is carved out of a single slab of stone, the endless endless of a jam that has never been particularly “cool” or technically proficient, but emblematic of something deeper in the human spirit.
While locking in with his bandmates with a crude, off-the-cuff intensity that suggests a genre unto itself, Young spouts what’s been on his mind lately: ecological disaster, lost friends and the redemption of new love. Young’s political statements are more like manifestos, pamphlets that demand to be read aloud over a megaphone in the town square rather than sung, and Young’s protest sometimes arrives smothered in cheese:
“I saw Mother Nature pushing Earth in a baby carriage”; “What about the animals? What about the birds and bees?” “There’s a rainbow of colors in the old U.S.A., no one’s gonna whitewash those colors away.”
With a blast of harmonica, “Think Of Me” is a jaunty acoustic strum that sounds more like Prairie Wind than Crazy Horse until the harmonies kick in. This promising start is followed by the sludge of “She Showed Me Love”, which ponders the fate of Mother Nature in the hands of “old white guys” and “young folks”. It’s long enough to begin with, but then plods away for another seven minutes of jamming and repeats of the title on top of the six it took to get there. As the only lengthy track on the album, it seems odd that this was the one groove given such an honor.
That’s basically the template for the album: softer songs alternating with loud ones. “Olden Days”, about losing touch with friends for various reasons, sports a nice little riff echoed by the voice and piano (uncredited, though it’s probably Nils), but it seems to be over awfully quickly. Then it’s back to doom, as “Help Me Lose My Mind” alternates an agitated verse with a more inspired chorus change (musically, anyway). The sad little metaphor of “Green Is Blue” is effective, and in case you missed the point, “Shut It Down” pounds it into your head. “Milky Way” was the first track streamed to the public, and while its first-take demo quality underwhelmed then, it works much better in this context. Plus, with its tension being more quiet than loud, it provides welcome contrast.
The charming “Eternity” not only revives earlier lyric ideas, such as a house of love and a train of love, but it also features the tapdancing skills of Nils Lofgren (“click, clack, clickety clack” indeed). Set to a tune we can’t put our finger on, “Rainbow Of Colors” is another attempt at an alternate national anthem, in that it offers a positive message instead of just saying why the other side is wrong. One might think the album would end there, but “I Do” is a tender love song that takes us out very gently, along the lines of “Music Arcade” and “Without Rings”. (Those who bought the vinyl—or paid the subscription—got a bonus in the form of the moody but moving “Truth Kills”, plus a live solo electric “Rainbow Of Colors”.)
Bob Doerschuk, USA TODAY : "So, if you enjoy the teenage band making noise in your neighbor's garage as much as you appreciate the combination of poetry and truth, then Colorado is an excellent fit."
Ian Parker, For Folk's Sake : "These songs flowed out of Young, thinking about life, the passing of time, but most importantly of all his fears of environmental change, which is not new to Young, of course, in the 1970s 'After The Gold Rush' sang of nature on the run, but it's an issue that is becoming more and more important with every moment. "
Joe Breen, Irish Times : "Young is often the best at letting his songs breathe in familiar arrangements with well-known players - the line from 1969 to 2019 is easy to spot, even though the tortuous guitar of 'She Showed Me Love' is the Patience with over 13 minutes of testing, while his lyrics can be open, awkward, even naive, they convey real emotional power when they are shaped by private passion and public anger. " 4 out of 5
Doug Collette, Glide Magazine: "But it's a determined sincerity that pervades the acoustic guitar-based expression of devotion, aptly titled 'I Do', by placing this comparatively calm five minutes as the conclusion of Colorado, Neil Young says, what needs to be said about the lasting connections in his life, not least the ones he cultivates so fruitfully with Crazy Horse. "
Alexis Petridis, The Guardian: "But the end result is yet another Neil Young album that enriches the non-bad and OK bunch he has accumulated over the past decade, while a steady stream of archive releases shows how awesome Neil Young is at his best can: as good as any artist in rock history, and certainly better than that. " 3 out of 5
Arne Willander, Rolling Stone: "The best comes to the end: the spooky softly groaned and intensely whispered" I Do ". In the Déjà-vus, in the alternation of hallucinatory reverie and rusty rumble, of bucolic Sunday peace and sprawling mantra" Colorado "mimics Dramaturgy of Young's concerts - with the band that still makes the most of its mildly stoned poetry, its adventurous excursions and its sentimental reminiscences. " Plate of the month
Gérard Otremba, Sounds & Books: "An album shaped by warning doom fantasies and the love of Mother Nature, musically beautifully performed in the rumbling Crazy Horse cosmos."
Jeremy Winograd, Slant Magazine: "Crazy Horse left old Neil out of a crisis in the '80s, so it would be natural to hope that her latest effort, Colorado, would prove to be the perfect antidote to his last fallow period In this regard, the album does not give a definitive conclusion, as its high-class Crazy Horse guitar work, a small handful of charming-intimate ballads, are at times adversely affected by the same problems that shaped Young's most recent solo work, including particularly unmelodious vocals and a tendency on awkward, blurred Facebook environmental and political ranting " 3 of 5
Alexander Baechle, Riff Magazine: "Although Colorado is essentially intimate, it's deceptively diverse, and while there's no shortage of cacophonic rock, gentle cuts like 'Eternity' and 'Green Is Blue' make meaningful variations. Concentrating on a major seventh chord, the album concludes with a look of gratitude and long experience, and Young's harmonica returns briefly, this time following the lonely heights and narrow gorges of the Rockies. "
Jesse Jarnow, WIRED: "There are jams and half-baked ideas, there are indelible melodies and eco-anthems and echoes of remembrance, there is a rhythm track with Lofgren's tap dancing shoes running through an octave vendor ('Eternity'), Ralph Molinas and Billy Talbot's otherworldly sense of space on perhaps the most exquisite, most fragile Crazy Horse jam of all time ('Milky Way') - the kind of creations Young wants to make the listener experience the same fidelity as the band. "
Nick Rosenblade, Clash Music: " The return of Lofgren inspired and Crazy Horse sounds better than since 'Greendale' in 2003. The guitars feel firmer and have more bite, Young sounds refreshed but enjoyable, fair 'Colorado' will not approaching the pantheon of classic Neil Young albums, but few of his most recent releases will be, as 'Le Noise' is the last to come closer, but 'Colorado' is still a very good album. " 8 out of 10
Leonie Cooper, NME: "Sure, it's not as relentless as 2015's 'The Monsanto Years' - his concept album about the evils of the monolithic, genetically modified agribusiness - but his commitment to a better way of doing things permeates each one of them 10 songs here. " 4 out of 5
Michael Bonner, UNCUT: "There is an instinctual urge to compare this newest horse with earlier versions - from the melodic intimacy of the Danny Whitten era to the emotional guitar playing, the solos and the elemental weight of the 1970s incarnation, all the way to the . brutal feedback 90s renaissance even Young is responsible for the fact that he - albeit unconsciously -. in advance of Colorado's publication live classical films from Sampedro era (Muddy track, Catalyst 1990, Rust Never Sleeps) streamed to NYA Lofgrens work feels more complementary than determinative, and serves the best traditions of Crazy Horse, rather than trying to drastically transform it. " 8 out of 10
COLORADO by Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Release Date: October 25, 2019 - Pre-order now (Please shop locally & independently. But if you can't, we appreciate your supporting Thrasher's Wheat by clicking this link. Thank you!!!)
"Stringman", sometimes called "The Danger Bird" -- AKA "The Dove from Above" -- the flying keyboard used during Neil Young's "Like a Hurricane" has been used for decades on monstrous jams with Crazy Horse.
The following research on the flying keyboard -- a 1974 Crumar Univox Stringman Synthesizer -- that comes down from the ceiling was provided by TW reader Doug.
I went to the Neil Young + Promise of the Real concert at Murat Theater at Old National Centre, Indianapolis, Indiana on - Sept 19, 2019..one of the best set lists of all the Neil shows I have seen (first was 1976 Stills-Young Band at Colt Park in Hartford CT).
As always, I noticed the keyboard hanging above and was happy to see it come down for Like a Hurricane (too many times I have seen it hang there all night and no Like a Hurricane). Since then, I've been wondering about the origin/history of the lowering keyboard and its design.
I discovered a 2013 (4/17/13) Rolling Stone interview with Poncho Sampedro. He was asked "Tell me about recording Like a Hurricane. Neil wrote in his book that you guys got it on the very first take". His reply:
"Well, that's true in one sense. We tried it with two guitars. I think one day we tried it once at the end of a session, another day we tried it all day with two guitars, and the third day we tried it with two guitars. It was just...He was upset with it. I sat down at the keyboard. He had an organ and I started playing it a little. He said "Well, let's try it like that." So we played it like that one time, and at the end of that tape, you can hear it, Neil goes, "Yeah, that's how it goes I think. That's it." "
And within the same interview, Poncho was asked "What was it like to play Like a Hurricane in a torrential downpour?" His reply:
"Oh, that was so crazy. It was raining off and on, kind of sprinkling all day there. Then we started playing Hurricane and a torrential downpour came. I mean, literally the organ stopped working it got so wet. I had to play guitar on that song for the first time in history. All that gear took a hit. It almost looked like hail was falling. I was drenched, and I couldn't move because I was attached to the organ. Those guys go to take a step back and everyone was quickly covering all the amps. The monitor console got totally soaked. A lot of things stopped working. It was crazy, but it's not the first time that happened during that song. It's amazing."
I wrote a note to NYA that was answered by Neil. He says:
It's a 'Stringman' analog synth, pretty rare these days. Mine are all delicate and I have spares. Love, N
Finally, I've attached a couple of Hurricane pictures from the Murat show in Indy.
MEGA-REVIEW: COLORADO by Neil Young & Crazy Horse | Alan's Album Archives
COLORADO by Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Release Date: October 25, 2019 - Pre-order now (Please shop locally & independently. But if you can't, we appreciate your supporting Thrasher's Wheat by clicking this link. Thank you!!!)
Over the years, we have regarded reviews from Alan's Album Archives to be indispensable for in-depth analysis of classic or neglected albums.
We are highlighting this review because Alan's Album Archives has compiled probably the most extensive collection of Neil Young album critical analysis anywhere. So here's an interesting look at COLORADO by Neil Young & Crazy Horse on Alan's Album Archives:
Neil sounds happier than I would have expected him to given the sad events of a year that saw him move in with a new love and lose the mother of many of his children (which does sound like a Machiavellian pact).
Rather than the guilt of ‘Storytone’ though Neil feels free to write his new wife love songs quite openly for the first real time and as a result there’s a sense of contentment and domesticity that we haven’t heard since 1978’s ‘Comes A Time’. In the middle of this turbulent record made in a hugely turbulent era personally and politically Neil can sing of rainbows and love with an innocence seventy-four-year-olds don’t normally have. Neil pays Darryl her own tributes in the way he once did with wives Pegi, Carrie and Susan, with the line to sum up her take-no-prisoners righteous soul ‘She walked like she knew where she was going’ to match the stability-and-brooms of ‘Harvest Moon’, the lust and confusion of ‘A Man Needs A Maid’ and the awed love songs of ‘Neil Young’ respectively.
Darryl brings light to a world of darkness, a rainbow of colours to an Earth that seems to exist in black-and-white and hope to a life that thought it was over and done already. Darryl is painted here time and again as a fierce fighter who knows her own mind but brings Neil a peace and tranquillity he hasn’t felt for a long time and a fairytale as she waited all those years to be with him without being disappointed in him. This album is very much her album in the same way that ‘Neil Young’ was for Susan, ‘Harvest’ was for Carrie and ‘Comes A Time’ was for Pegi, but naturally for such a known eco-warrior who knows her politics, it’s a record that’s concerned with the outer world as well as the inner world.
One of the big announcements made during the press junket for ‘Colorado’ was that, after fifty years of being a dual citizen, Neil is now officially an American. This is, if he doesn’t mind me saying so, a weird time to do just that. The official line is that Neil ‘got tired of not having a say’ in American politics and fed up of lambasting critics who wondered why he cared so much about Trump if he was Canadian. It is, I fear, a sign of the times. Nobody questioned Neil’s right to write about whomever the hell he wanted when Nixon was in the White House and even as recently as 2008 George Bush Jnr was fair game; it’s only now the Trumpies are in the house that people are as likely to check stranger’s citizenship rights and birth certificate before they check out your record collection. It seems odd, too, that Neil of all people should stoop to caring what the public thought of him just two years after gleefully kicking off ‘The Visitor’ with the line ‘I’m Canadian by the way…’ The politics of what’s happening to the world runs through the veins of ‘Colorado’ in more ways than just the title, even if it’s softer than the Trump pot-shots of the last couple of CDs. For starters, Trump doesn’t get a specific mention this time around though that’s clearly who Neil is aiming at with his tales of biased television reports and angry unthinking supporters.
Full album review with track by track commentary of COLORADO by Neil Young & Crazy Horse on Alan's Album Archives.
Trey Anastasio Tells Neil Young & Willie Nelson Stories
Last night (Oct 27), Trey Anastasio told an epic tale of playing with Willie Nelson and Neil Young at Farm Aid's 1998 concert. (Thanks Jambase!)
Playing at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, Trey relates -- in rather humorous fashion -- suggesting to Willie Nelson they play "Moonlight In Vermont" and to Neil Young they play “Powderfinger”. Neil warns Trey that he is not much of a planner ends up joining Phish’s set for a 26 minute jam on “Down By The River.” (See below only 1st 19 minutes.)
On October 3, 1998, Phish performed at the Farm Aid Benefit, near Chicago, IL, with Young. Setlist notes from Andy's Phish Page indicate that Young joined Phish onstage for "Runaway Jim". Next came an electric instrumental that is best described as "Arc"-like. This was followed by a monster 26 minute jam on "Down By the River".
Judge for your self, but this version of "Down By the River" is considered to be of the top 10 performances of the song. Certainly the best ever non Ol-Black version. Neil uses a hollow body Gretsch guitar (Trey Anastasio's older Languedoc guitars, hand-made by Phish soundman Paul Languedoc) and delivers some heavy hand blows to the body at various jam points. Massive shredding ensues.
The Trey and Neil duel (@ 12:45 above) is epic. We can't honestly we've ever seen another guitarist ever push Neil so far to the dark side. Unfortunately, the YouTube version is *only* 19 minutes long.
If I was ever going to teach a master class to young guitarists, the first thing I would play them is the first minute of Neil Young's original "Down by the River" solo. It's one note, but it's so melodic, and it just snarls with attitude and anger.
It's like he desperately wants to connect.
Neil's playing is like an open tube from his heart right to the audience. In the Nineties, we played a festival with Crazy Horse. At the end of "Like a Hurricane," Neil went into this feedback solo that was more like a sonic impressionist painting. He was about six feet back from the microphone, singing so you could just hear him over the colorful waves of hurricane-like sound.
I think about that moment a lot when I'm playing. Traditional concepts of rhythm and keys are great, but music is like a giant ocean. It's a big, furious place, and there are a lot of trenches that haven't been explored.
Neil is still blazing a trail for people who are younger than him, reminding us you can break artistic ground.
Lots of powerful imagery in the music video including a white dove, landing on Neil's White Falcon guitar, while dressed in all white.
Frame via Official Music Video for "Peace and Love" - Neil Young w/ Pearl Jam
Peace and love
Flying so high
Peace and love
Too young to die
Peace and love
Now you decide
Stay for the children
You don't really want to go
Can't feel it pulling like you did
Peace and love
For more on the musical collaborations of Eddie Vedder and Neil, see Pearl Jam and Neil Young page with details on Bridge School concerts, the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame induction, and more.
Colorado is an album, as you'd expect from Crazy Horse, with some serious character, guts and attitude.
That's half the story. Colorado also features some of the most subtle, delicate and beautiful playing on a Neil Young record in the past 25 years. It's an album of two musical personalities.
On first listen, I found Colorado to be a decidedly unsettling record. There's a definite sense of unease there, in the doomy drone of Help Me Lose My Mind and the "ignored" warning calls of Green Is Blue. In the chasm between the safety of 'Eternity' (a song which really comes to life in this lovely studio version) and the encroaching danger of those "old white guys trying to kill Mother Nature".
You can see it, too, in the cold-looking album cover, and in the cruel contrast between the free-flying narrator of album opener Think Of Me and the suffering souls down below. In the ominously shifting minor chords of She Showed Me Love, and the urgently whispered lyric and quietly threatening bass growl of "I Do" (a magnificently restrained low-key performance that concludes the record with a feeling of lingering chill).
None of this is expressed directly as being acutely sinister, it's just a sensation of unease that creeps up on you as you listen. I think this is the most haunting Neil Young album in many years.
The production is exciting and uncluttered, with thoughtful touches added throughout that give the songs a lot of colour: the harmony vocals, the beautifully spacious piano, the striking flashes of dream-like echo to Neil's voice on the unique Milky Way.
There's an edgy gutsiness in these recordings, a trace of David Briggs' enduring influence. Its not just the sound, which is a blend of the workman-like with the serene and delicate; it's the attitude, the personality. The sense of mystery, the perception of a sense of space. The arrangements of these songs are memorable, catchy. And the overall feel they have is really quite unique; whatever surface similarities they have to some of Neil's old warhorses.
Nils Lofgren makes his long-awaited return to a Neil Young album, and his contributions are predictably masterful. Masterful, but not obviously so. You can't hear him? That's the point. He's working his magic without drawing attention to himself at the expense of the songs. Often you won't even know he's there unless you know what you are listening for, but all the time you can feel his presence. His playing on "I Do" is exquisite.
It's true that the most powerful songs of all, the ones that really get through to us, aren't often the most direct or one-dimensional ones. And that guy you heard ranting from a soapbox when you passed by the town square yesterday? You (and everyone else) ignored him and walked on by, and that's his problem, not yours.
But not all great songwriting has to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Some of the lyric writing on Colorado is blunt, stylistically, but it is not bland. One of Neil's old tricks is taking something that could be considered a weakness and putting it into a context where it becomes a strength. I found Colorado to be inventive, entertaining and very heartfelt, with an engaging blend of haunting ballads and grinding, attitude-driven abrasive rock. It gets two thumbs up from me. Crazy Horse is back, and not a moment too soon.
Scotsman.
Thanks for the first impressions Scotsman, as always!
We caught the Mountaintop film last week, prior to the album release, so it was quite fascinating to watch and hear the song tracks get laid down and then hear the album stream on NYA the next day.
Frankly, we've been keeping "TRUTH KILLS" on repeat lately. The lyrics "truth kills in a world of lies" just slays us. pun intended.
Also, the 'glass harmonica" on "I Do" is just exquisite exotic giving the song a very other worldly feel. The film Mountaintop has some cool insight into the unique instrument and it sounds along with Tech Bob Rice explaining it's use. The 'glass harmonica's last seen on SWA's "Safeway Cart".
COLORADO by Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Release Date: October 25, 2019 - Pre-order now (Please shop locally & independently. But if you can't, we appreciate your supporting Thrasher's Wheat by clicking this link. Thank you!!!)
>> Pre-Order on Amazon.com << 
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