How I Like Neil Young: The Albums, pt. 3
Part 2 is here. Part 1 is here. My handy dandy profoundly subjective numerical rating scheme is decoded here.
This Note’s For You (1988) – 4
Freedom (1989) – 7
Ragged Glory (1990) – 9
Weld (1991) – 6
Arc (1991) - 6
Harvest Moon (1992) – 5
Unplugged (1993) – 8
Lucky Thirteen (1993) - 4
Sleeps With Angels (1994) – 8
Mirror Ball (1995) – 6
Dead Man (1995) - 4
Broken Arrow (1996) – 6
Year Of The Horse (1997) – 7
Free of David Geffen’s bad vibes and back with his buddies at Reprise, Neil was now free to keep awkwardly chasing the commercial zeitgeist while staying resolutely Neil. Whether he was mocking Miller ads or aping them, This Note’s For You buries what may be decent songs in horn charts and Fabulous Thunderblues guitar leads. Someone could say "but Anthony, remember your take on Landing On Water? Think of this as Crispin Glover starring in The Return Of Bruno." To which I’d respond, “No.” (The album was originally credited to Neil Young & The Bluenotes until Harold Melvin was like WHAT THE FUCK?)
Instead of calling a law firm, Reprise politely accepted this tangent and even facilitated Neil earning a MTV moonman. Soothed, Neil threw parent company Warner Bros a second CSNY album (boomer barf too queasy for even this Landing On Water fan) and then made his first LP critics dug in a decade. The arrangements were still ‘80s as hell and his Bluenotes hadn’t left the building, but - less enamored of Bush than Reagan - Neil’s topical commentary now swung more clearly left, and his guitar solos (as foreshadowed by an import EP of feedback freakouts) were returning to showoff form. If Freedom wasn’t twenty minutes longer than Landing On Water and Life, I might agree it’s an improvement.
Instead, I give that honor to Ragged Glory. It's just as long as Freedom, but for a better reason: CRAZY HORSE, their shoulders relaxed and free of keytars. Mature love songs and a trashy cover of "Farmer John" bracketed by outtake revisits and a "natural anthem," it’s boisterous and sentimental, nostalgic yet happy in the moment. “Dad-rock” in the best sense. Weld was another double-live victory lap, with opening act Sonic Youth probably an influence on Arc, a thirty minute sound sculpture made of feedback codas that honestly isn't sculpted enough; you can still tell when the next AOR chestnut starts.
At an unprecedented level of career comfort, Neil gave Reprise Harvest IV - even putting Harvest in the title! It’s a touch too docile for my taste, and made all the more negligible by his MTV Unplugged set (surrounding the album’s push tracks with some startling rethinks - including a “previously unrecorded” and a number from Trans) and the Dreamin Man Live 92 archive release (a solo performance of the album with far less Vaseline on the lens). Also too docile for my taste is Lucky Thirteen, Geffen’s attempt to make sense of the albums he’d given them in the ‘80s. A mistake, as they’re not supposed to make sense.
Flattered by Seattle but spooked by Kurt Cobain’s self-destruction, Neil decided to challenge Crazy Horse again - this time with inner city blues, tack pianos and flute breaks. As with Freedom, I wish he’d cut things down to 40 minutes instead of 60, but it holds a reflective, mournful vibe throughout - successful veterans watching a new generation have their own ditch trilogy and worse. Mirror Ball, a week spent with Pearl Jam as a jealousy trap aimed at the Horse, could be cut even shorter, but features “I’m The Ocean,” the definitive statement from this period. That statement being “life is weird and frustrating but beautiful, and I am too. Try to keep up.”
The Dead Man soundtrack would have been great as the pilot episode of a podcast where Neil plays along to movies whose dialogue we can’t hear (too bad the name RiffTrax is taken). Taken alone, it’s slight, and sadly we can sometimes hear the dialogue. Reportedly, he also did this for Bill Murray’s Hunter S Thompson biopic in 1980, but it’s hard enough to find the movie.
The death of David Briggs, that Real Rock Jiminy Cricket I mentioned in pt. 1 and haven’t mentioned enough in between, brought Crazy Horse back together for the diffuse Broken Arrow, a Tonight's The Night wake held during Ragged Glory daylight hours. It’s not quite a classic, and Year Of The Horse isn’t quite a double-live victory lap. This benefits the latter, though, alternafying deep cuts instead of revisiting the usual staples.
Up next: what becomes of a Godfather once the kids start having kids of their own.