Angsthead logo 1 Angsthead logo 2    
Our interesting tag line
Home Stories Music Pictures Casseroles Lists Links
Submit material to Angsthead.com
What this site is all about
Angsthead.com site map
Angstheadite photo album
Angsthead.com T-shirts and other stuff
The Kid Dyn-O-Mite: official drink of Angsthead.com
Angstheadite Bios
 
Rex's Reviews -- Idylls of the King
Idylls of the King:
Neil Young, Silver & Gold (Reprise)

......There's a very specific and most probably unique set of frustrations involved in being a Neil Young fan.

......At this point, it's hard to imagine who the typical Neil Young fan is. The man has made and alienated fans over and over again for well over three decades. Looking at the fan sites online doesn't do much to clarify the profile of Young's core contingent. (Hmmm, says here that we're to be called "Rusties", after Neil's 1978 LP Rust Never Sleeps -- by which token you might as well take to referring to Bowie fans as "Let's Dancies".) The virtues of Neil Young at his best should be self-evident; if they've eluded you thus far, you're not likely to catch on at this juncture. Or perhaps you have a strong preference for one incarnation of the guy or another: Mellow Neil, Godfather of Grunge Neil, Iconoclast Neil, Traditionalist Neil... take your pick. But there are those of us who are endlessly fascinated by the why and how of the whole integrated package. And we're obliged to keep listening during the "difficult" periods that crop up now and then.

......Take, for instance, 1999, when we had to endure what's become a once-a-decade trial: a new Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reunion record. Sure, we can shake these records off as charity in the mold of Neil's Bridge School benefits, but by the time this latest one arrived, things were already looking a little rough for the faithful. Specifically, after offering up an almost unprecedented treasure trove of superlative material throughout the early '90's, Neil Young seemed to abruptly forget how to finish an album.

......That's not to say that he forgot how to write great songs, or even took off on the kind of willfully obscure stylistic tangents that characterized his '80's work. One is tempted, however, to see a little of Young's notorious proclivity for "heading for the ditch" in the way he simply didn't seem interested in finishing his last few albums. Young's 1995 Mirror Ball featured a clutch of terrific songs and some ferocious, surprisingly unpretentious backing from Pearl Jam... balanced with filler and pump organ sketches. True, it was recorded in two days, with unfamiliar collaborators. How, then, can we account for the follow-up, Broken Arrow, which found Neil reconnecting with his old cohorts Crazy Horse, only to throw in the towel after just seven original tunes and cap the record with an almost unlistenable live piss-take of "Baby, What You Want Me to Do?" Between that and the superfluous double-live Crazy Horse disc that followed -- the second such set in six years -- it was starting to look like Neil was going through one of his "difficult" phases. (And let's not even get into the much delayed comprehensive box set, which has allegedly been Neil's "next project" since 1988 or so...)

......There's a sense in which that deathless cover of "Baby" -- plodding and loose even by Crazy Horse standards, and buried beneath the chatter of an audience who sound indifferent at best -- is emblematic of where Neil Young stood at the end of the '90's. He had mined his rock resources dry, and, with his grunge and indie-rock disciples fading from view, needed to do something, anything else. In that sense, the CSNY record came as almost a relief; its mediocrity could not be blamed solely on Neil, and hey, at least it wasn't as vile an abomination as 1988's American Dream. It did, however, require Young to cannibalize the solo album he was working on at the time in order to provide the inevitable highlights of the reunion record. Still, somewhere along the line, he found time to take what was left over, add a few new tunes and dust off a few old-but-unrecorded numbers to complete his current solo album, Silver & Gold.

......Despite the disparate vintages of the songs, the album is a beauty -- a coherent, understated beauty. This is an album, an album in exactly the way that the last few records weren't; in fact, it's an album in the way that almost nothing is these days. Silver & Gold clocks in under 45 minutes and contains no more than 10 songs, but each of those songs is a fully realized piece which also somehow manages to complement and reinforce the other nine. Not for the first time, Young has taken a set of songs written at different times in different contexts, and somehow cobbled them into a seamless whole.

......Helping to hold it all together is the sound, which is about as sparse as a Neil Young record gets. Often, it's just Neil and his guitar. When the band shows up, it's a loose aggregate that includes Ben Keith on slide guitar and Spooner Oldham on keys -- both veterans of the Stray Gators, the rootsy band that backed young on his most popular records, 1972's Harvest and it's 1992 sequel Harvest Moon. The arrangements here are far more minimalist than on either of those records, though. The drums are way back in the mix, if not absent altogether; on the beautiful "Razor Love" they're largely traded in for a pair of tastefully subtle shakers. The focus rightly falls on Young's acoustic guitar playing, which is as nimble and fluid as it's ever been. (the title track in particular features the kind of gently melodic leads we haven't heard from him in a long time) and vocal melodies, which rank among his finest. It sounds very, very pretty, with nary an amplifier in sight.

......There's also a thematic glue holding the whole enterprise together, and it's incredibly -- almost relentlessly-- upbeat, even romantic. This is a love letter to love, and Neil addresses it directly again and again, in a way that would be hard to stomach if it weren't so overpoweringly genuine. "All I need is a song of love to sing for you," he warbles on the lovely "Distant Camera", and he means it. There are flashes of darkness, sure, but they're all overcome within a few lines. The title character of the fairy-tale "Horseshoe Man" roams the "Land of the Brokenhearted", reassembling the shattered pieces of love. "The Great Divide" features a similar emotional no-man's-land into which the narrator and his lover fall for a time, hey, no problem, they just "don't go there anymore". In "Razor Love", a girl is misunderstood and neglected by her parents, but is rescued by the narrator's faith and love. And so it goes.

......Silver & Gold is dedicated to Young's wife Pegi, and "inspired by" his son Ben, and it feels that way. A sense of family continuity runs through the songs. "Daddy Went Walkin'" is a rusticated nursery rhyme cut from the same closth as Harvest Moon's "Old King", but it does its predecessor infinitely better by swapping the dog for a benign patriarch who simultaneously evokes the old man of "Nick Nack Paddywack" and Young's own classic "Old Man". By the song's end Daddy's holding Mama in his arms and they're sweethearts with "time on their hands". And they're back again in a dream at the end of "Red Sun", an idyll of sorts about a railroad town that's the polar opposite of any Land of the Brokenhearted. Young even finds it in his heart to wistfully contemplate a reunion with Buffalo Springfield, just for kicks. Yes, he's in a very good mood.

......Make no mistake: nobody else could pull this kind of stuff off. But Neil Young has more than earned his idyll, and everything he's saying here is true. This is as brave a record in that respect as any of his dark masterpieces. The subtle musical setting keeps things modest; the result is a record that's at once warmer and less self-important than either of its Harvest antecedents. There's as much conviction in that warmth as there is in the anguish of, say, "Like a Hurricane".

......If the positive vibrations on Silver & Gold are too much for you, you can take solace in the only song here that even leaves the redemptive power of love open to question. That would be "Without Rings", with which Young, in a characteristically perverse twist, chooses to close the album. It's so damned pretty, though, that you could be forgiven for missing the dark undercurrent of abandonment and loss. It's also the only song Young sings in his lower register, evoking such obscure gems as the recent "Music Arcade" or "Ambulance Blues" from his out-of-print classic On the Beach. If that's not enough to send a shiver down your spine, sit this one out and wait for the next Sleeps with Angels.

......But there's plenty to be happy with here.

Submitted by:
Rex Broome
...............................................................................................................
 
 

Home | Stories | Music | Pictures | Casseroles | Lists | Links

Site Info | Site Map | Photo Album | Angsthead Stuff | Kid Dyn-O-Mite! | Our Bios