Colorado: Neil Young and Crazy Horse, One More Time, With Feeling
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| Proof of purchase. |
“Think of Me” is a classic folksy, semi-honky-tonk acoustic tune featuring Neil's harmonica and a simple beat. Like most lyrics on the album, Neil is singing about growing older, still in love with life, his woman, and the natural world. This is an easy-going song that introduces the album in an accessible way. “I want to live long and I’m happy to report it back to you…” A strong first track that could easily be off 2005's Prairie Wind.
Neil Young and Crazy Horse (NYCH) are famous, of course, for their lengthy jam session rock songs. At 13 and half minutes the second track on Colorado, “She Showed Me Love," is the album's creative contribution to that aspect of Neil's catalog. It feels like the general flavor of “Down By The River” from 1969's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. The tune features minimalist lyrics surrounding a environmental protest theme with undertones of old age, white privilege, longevity of experience combined with youthful dissent. The song plays around with aspects of having an intimate relationship with mother nature.
It is mother nature that shows “her love” in this song. The lyrics basically end after around 6 minutes when the tune transitions into a NYCH specialty – over 7 minutes of riff variations on Old Black inside the band's sustained effort of extended chords that reminds me of their music on 1996's Broken Arrow. This is not the faster paced energy featured on Neil's recent work with the youthful band Promise of the Real. Instead, the song, and the album as a whole, slows things down without compromising on energy or intensity. The basic energetic NYCH drive is definitely here to enjoy, at 3/4 time. Great to get lost in!
But, what the hell, Neil's 73. His age is not something Neil tries to avoid or pretend that he is something else. He and the band (they are all getting on up there too) embrace it and use it to their advantage in terms of achieving a broader perspective, tinged with nostalgia. A great example of that is the third track, “Olden Days", which reminds me of the music on 2002’s Are You Passionate? The tune deals with the thrill and pain of love not only in the present but how it lingers within memory of the past. Nostalgia has always been something Neil could plug into lyrically. But it appears more on this album than on any of his previous efforts. A really gentle, reflective electric track.
Which gives way to the flip side of nostalgia in the form of classic NYCH anger. In this case at aspects of the past that need to be (but cannot be) forgotten and at the strange, strangulating encroachment of modern consumerist technology on our lives. “Help Me Lose My Mind” has a lot of strength, power and anguish to it. I really connect with this song as it reflects my own experience sometimes in experiencing the present and the past. A marvelous short track (4:15) with Old Black raging. This one feels grungy. NYCH being the "godfather of grunge" (additional info here) with 1979's sensational Live Rust.
“Green Is Blue” is another environmental ballad, one of the simplest tracks on the album. I like the way this one is mixed. It is tender yet deceptively biting. Even though this song doesn't attempt to do very much, its very simplicity is magical. Neil's on piano here, playing to his strength, in airy floating poetry of beauty, ugliness, and irony. The piano is played at times in an 1950's country and western music style. The band offers superbly subtle support, particularly Nils Lofgren on guitar. The instrumentation is much more sophisticated on this track than it seems.
With global warming, pollution, the death of many of Earth's species Neil idealistically screams that we need to “Shut It Down” as in “got to shut the whole system down” and start over. Wild electric guitar work on this one. It has a mighty forcefulness reminiscent of “The Restless Consumer,” one of my favorite 21st century Neil tunes (off Living with War from 2006). This isn't gentle or simple Neil. This is frustrated Neil who, in his typical irony, claims to have great hope in the future because the world as we know it is fu#ked up and will be rebooted whether we want it or not. A great hope wrapped in complete uncertainty. As with the rest of the album, the vocal harmonies in the chorus are a bit strained at times - but that is part of the rawness Neil seeks.
“Milky Way” is an easy-going rocker, a more abstract song than rest of the album. I like the instrumentation on this one a lot. Crazy Horse is a solid backbone, tight and measured in support of Neil's brief meanderings on Old Black. The lyrics have a "noir" quality about them. An echo maybe of Neil’s late-1980's Bluenotes period. This song is a series of images that may or may not be connected. If Neil is correct that how a song feels is more important than how it sounds, then this is the perfect manifestation of that. I love the feeling the band creates on this one. Easy to listen to over and over.
Neil is a much better guitar player than a pianist. But throughout his career he has made simple piano chords work very well with his songs. “Eternity” is another sweet song shifting into a nice, unexpected shuffle now and then. The lyrics are slightly over-worn and perhaps a bit cliché, even though I do find myself tapping my foot to them now and then. Another country and western influenced tune.
I am not overly impressed with the next track, “Rainbow of Colors.” This is a song about overcoming racism. This is a classic NYCH anthem (think "Long Walk Home" from 1987's Life). As with a lot of past NYCH anthems, this one comes off as feeling like filler to me, perhaps the weak link in the chain of music offered on Colorado.
“I Do” is another sweet, simple, acoustical ballad backed with minimal but important accents from Crazy Horse. This is mostly Neil gently strumming his Martin guitar. What a wonderful, carefree song, full of hope and intimacy with an earthly, everyday quality. A wonderful final reprise from all that anger Neil has elsewhere on the record.
Colorado mixes up electric and acoustic, the accessible with the complex, the sweet with the bitter. I said in the beginning that this album successfully captures the classic NYCH sound and style. But Colorado is more than that. It offers a wider range of Neil's styles. It is a nice bonus to experience Crazy Horse fitting fine into places they haven't been that often before with Neil. This in and of itself makes Colorado special if not otherwise distinctive. If music that feels better than it sounds was what Neil was aiming for then this album is a bullseye. A worthy effort even though Neil, in an unusual statement for any musical artist, says, "We're not trying to impress anybody."
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