As we await the latest album from Neil Young ( see announcement for album titled 'Second Song', recorded with the Chrome Hearts) here's Ranking the Neil Young Albums from His First Decade | All Music by Daniel de Visé:
Few artists garner more attention on AllMusic than Neil Young. Trust me: I've seen the numbers.Back in the '80s, when I was searching out used vinyl of On the Beach and Time Fades Away in Chicago record stores, those records felt like guilty pleasures. Neil Young wasn't widely regarded as a top-drawer artist, like Springsteen or Dylan, although the triple-LP Decade in 1977 made a pretty strong case.That's all changed now. Fans and pundits have come to regard Young as the standard-bearer for real, garage-band rock and roll, passing the tradition from the Troggs and The Standells and Seeds in the '60s to Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam and Wilco in the '90s and beyond, carrying the torch through the eras of yacht rock, arena rock, prog rock, synth rock, hair metal and disco. All hail the Godfather of Grunge.Young has been churning out solo albums for nearly 60 years. Some of the later ones are really good. And that poses a problem: Every time Young puts out a Ragged Glory or Harvest Moon, he pushes the old stuff a little further into the past. Time fades away.As good as those albums are – I also love Mirror Ball – I don't think they hold a candle to most of Young's recordings from roughly the first Decade. In that spirit, let's go back and revisit the early albums: The first 10 solo studio LPs, from Neil Young through Rust Never Sleeps, and the essential live set Time Fades Away.Here's my attempt at a ranking.
Full review and ranking @ Ranking the Neil Young Albums from His First Decade | All Music by Daniel de Visé.
Also, see:
Neil Young's Ditch Trilogy
"Time Fades Away", "Tonight’s the Night" & "On the Beach"
(Click photo to enlarge)
P. 80 - 3 of Neil Young's Albums
More on Neil Young's albums, reviews and commentary.
Also, see more on the origin of the expression "Ditch Trilogy" as applied to Neil Young's 3 albums "Time Fades Away", "Tonight’s the Night" & "On the Beach". Also, see Neil Young's Ditch Trilogy -- Or is it a Quadrilogy? Or Quintology?.
Also, see The Beautiful, Enduring Gloom of Neil Young's Ditch Trilogy | PandoraMusic.
UPDATE:
- The Essential Neil Young Albums
- Neil Young Albums From Worst To Best | Stereogum
- The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time| Rolling Stone
- Every Neil Young Album Ranked | The Guardian)
- Neil Young's albums, reviews and commentary
- Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Times
- Neil Young: Rolling Stone | 100 Greatest Guitarists
- Results and discussion of Poll for Favorite Neil Young Studio Album of 21st Century
- Comment of the Moment: Poll Results for Favorite Neil Young Studio Zero's Album
- Neil Young on Swedish TV Interview Discussing His Catalog - 2005
- Listening to All of Neil Young's Albums in Chronological Order: His journey, his self-appointed task by Mike "Expecting 2 Fly"
Maybe I am getting too old for this stuff, but the comments connected to the list seem too thin to matter. Critical reflection is not just opinion, it should be something akin to an argument. Totally unconvincing stuff. Consider what the guy says here: "side two of Rust is unlistenable"? But then there is no reasons given.
ReplyDeleteCould not agree more strongly, Abner. Rolling Stone “Best Of” b/s lists immediately come to mind…
DeleteThanks Abner.
ReplyDeleteYou're right.
We're all way beyond evaluating Neil’s first decade.
Mainly, All Music -- FWIW -- still has some gravitas on these matters.
But it's all rather cursory and shallow.
Honestly? An opportunity for TW to dig deep into topics like Neil's Ditch Trilogy -- Or is it a Quadrilogy? Or Quintology?.
Did we ever settle this vital subject?
It’s ALL One Song.
ReplyDeleteI have been thinking about this on and off all afternoon. I'm not sure where the ditch stuff ends and I am not sure if I care. I am thinking about all the people I have known over the years, starting in college, who have said that Neil's music changed, saved, redeemed, guided, helped, and stirred their lives. There are many people on this list. Without Comes a Time and On the Beach, I am lost in college and then we got the soundtrack for the authentic rockers: Rust Never Sleeps. I had a great old Chevy pickup with the stupid "Split Wood, Not Atoms" bumper sticker and on drives to ice-fish or grouse hunt or take out a girl, I listened to Ambulance Blues and it somehow made me cry and hope at the same time. And then there was my senior year in high school (1978) when After the Gold Rush took over and changed the way I looked at myself and the world. It all makes sense to me now. Neil engaged my entire self.
ReplyDeleteHere we are in the years. A journey through the past. Similar story. “Decade” was, Is and remains the definitive collection that propelled me from the JHS, “KISS” era, into a kind of musical maturity. Neil fer sure has staying power. Been with me my whole life since. (And before, honestly. I recall hearing HOG on my parent’s AM family car radio). That has morphed seamlessly into ARCHIVES. First, as the ultimate collection. Becoming a daily source of inspiration & community online, including
DeleteThrasher’s Wheat.
My goodness.
The gift that keeps on giving.
IT’S ALL ONE SONG.
Isn't that another one of these geriatric fan nostalgia acts? Four and a half decades ago a man during the better half of his 30's created fantastic music, and did so for the further four and a half decades (at least to some, beyond the whinnying grunge faction). The fact, described by Abner above, that Neil Young engaged the entire selves of maybe more than one generation (or parts thereof) makes these kinds of ratings obsolete. I rather go with the Zimmerman strategy as I understand it. Dylan took to integrating his own catalogue into what has been defined as "The Great American Songbook" by re-interpreting the work of others, creating acoustic lookalikes, writing about it himself, and step by step blending, fusing and amalgamating with the background or horizon of the musical landscape. Re-hashing old hit parades and billboard charts should be buried by the heirs of grandpas rock'n'roll encyclicals, bumper stickers should be issued... (Harvest Sun, Not Nuclear Waste).
ReplyDeleteNeedless to say that comparing the different approaches taken by Dylan and Young in order to consolidate their legacies (NYA vs. Inscriptionlike attempts to define the immortality of your own songbook) the Dylan version appears to be more of a grandeur style suggestion. But hey, he is a Nobel laureate, and rightly so!
ReplyDeleteAt the time these albums came out, I imagine the demarcation between (for instance) Harvest and Time Fades Away was stark. From that POV, the “ditch” narrative makes some sense. But is just that: a narrative constructed by people trying to make sense of what they heard at the time; this seems to be a universal human impulse.
ReplyDeleteToday, the NY Archives reinforce hindsight: it’s easier to see how one album, or era, shades into the next. The commonalities are clearer than the dividing points.
The original albums reflect songs Neil chose
at the time. From a strictly chronological perspective, it’s clear that differing artistic choices could have shaped different narratives.