Comment of the Moment: Comes A Time & Time Fades Away by Neil Young - Underrated?

Neil Young's "Comes A Time" & "Time Fades Away" Albums

 

The Comment of the Moment is from a recent post VIDEO REVIEW:  Comes A Time & Time Fades Away by Neil Young - Underrated? by Abner:

I  don't think Time Fades Away can be overrated because it can't be rated in any usual sense. 

I mean, the sheer and raw originality of the whole album is, by usual standards, inconceivable. Post Harvest, he releases what? But then the songs cannot be dismissed. For many good songwriters, "LA" might be a career type achievement. For Neil Young it is almost a throw-away. The album pulses with urgency and lingers on the edges of nihilism without going over. As always, Neil seeks redemption. Everything that is remarkably angry, ugly or dismal is balanced back by rough dignity, forgiveness and grace. ("Don't Be Denied" is at the base of self-respect and so it reaches out to others, it is relational, not insulated or isolating. In high school it was my theme song and if I cared about theme songs now, it would still be my theme song.) 

Neil Young always touches those on the margins and as it turns out that seems to most of us: in other words, he speaks in universals buried deep in his particular experience.

Comes a Time is weirdly good, not the expectation. "Look Out For My Love" has that roughed up emotional need that seems a base of human love- the song picks up an urgency that becomes dramatic in the best ways. "Comes a Time" bluntly expresses what is universal without being banal- who can do this except a great artist? I can actually recall my mother saying once- to someone who was inquiring about my wayward sister- that there "comes a time when people find stability." Yes, a cliche but one that is surrounded on all sides by truth and danger. One wonders: is it possible to keep drifting, to never find stability? And the answer is yes, which is why we wonder about how anything can be stable and secure.

Finally, Time Fades Away is a sharp slap in the face to an embedded hegemony of success thinking and it is then beautifully liberating. No, the artist does not simply follow up with some unilinear progress, but might actually break in half, which Neil does on this album. His expressed brokenness is part of our healing, the hope of art and the human spirit, that we can come back from the brink. But we have to go to the brink. 

Many thought he had lost his marbles when in fact he was the one who was dealing with reality. 

Our reality.

Thanks Abner for the good discussion here on the merits of CAT and TFA.

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