Artist: Neil Young With Crazy Horse
Album: Psychedelic Pill
Bitrate: 239kbps avg
Quality: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.98.4 / -V0 / 44.100Khz
Label: Reprise
Genre: Rock
Size: 160.81 megs
PlayTime: 1h 27min 41sec total
Rip Date: 2012-10-24
Store Date: 2012-10-26
Track List: Disc #1/2
--------
01. Driftin' Back 27:37
02. Psychedelic Pill 3:28
03. Ramada Inn 16:50
04. Born In Ontario 3:49
Track List: Disc #2/2
--------
01. Twisted Road 3:29
02. She's Always Dancing 8:33
03. For The Love Of Man 4:14
04. Walk Like A Giant 16:29
05. Psychedelic Pill (Alternate 3:12
Mix)
Release Notes:
--------
Neil Young is not, at a guess, an artist who suffers much from writerÆs block.
In the past few years, many of his albums have felt like spontaneous dispatches
from an over-productive mind.
He has been provoked into action by a useless president, and by an obsessive
need to apply driving metaphors to AmericaÆs parlous economic state. Some
projects have been shaped by a new relationship û with, say, producer Daniel
Lanois û while others have stemmed from reunions with old collaborators, as
Young cycles through the musicians he has relied upon, with an admittedly
capricious brand of loyalty, for over four decades. It is easy, too, to imagine
Young foraging in his own archives, repeatedly postponing the next volume of his
retrospective endeavours when something old stimulates him into creating
something new, at speed.
Talking to Uncut a few months ago, Young gave the impression that bashing out a
book came just as simply. ôWriting was a very easy thing to do,ö he told Jaan
Uhelszki, ôthings came out.ö Later, though, he suggested that his artistic
hyperactivity was born of necessity: ôThey paid me some money to write the
book,ö he said, ôand that means I donÆt have to go on the road [he has
subsequently, of course, gone back on the road]. I spend money as soon as I get
it. I donÆt care how much money I have, I can use it to do something.ö
In 2012, then, this haphazard magnate has found a cunning new way to build
multiple revenue streams from one idea. First, he wrote what may be an
autobiography: Waging Heavy Peace, due to be published this autumn. Secondly, he
reconvened the doughty Crazy Horse to channel folk songs remembered from his
youth into a scrappy, invigorating album, Americana. Finally, Young kept Ralph
Molina, Billy Talbot and a notably engaged Frank Sampedro around for further
sessions, that have coalesced into the 35th and longest studio album of his
career: Psychedelic Pill, a remarkable series of jams that keep returning to the
subject of writing a memoir.
Psychedelic Pill opens, quaintly, with a kind of acid flashback. As ôDriftinÆ
Backö begins, Young is alone with his acoustic guitar, ôdreaming about the way
things sound now/Write about them in my book,ö and grappling with the
relationship between himself and his readers. After about 80 seconds, Crazy
Horse join him for some unusually sweet, CSNY-like harmonies, but in an
audacious coup de thΘΓtre, they are gradually overwhelmed by another, electric
version of the song. A looming jam on the song is faded in, midway through what
proves to be one of many protean solos.
If ôDriftinÆ Backö is anything to go by, Waging Heavy Peace will be inventive,
idiosyncratic, digressive and preposterously long. ôDriftinÆ Backö ebbs and
flows for 27 minutes, anchored - if thatÆs the right word - by Ralph MolinaÆs
highly personal interpretation of keeping time, while Young sorts through a wide
selection of his most languid and mellifluous attack strategies. The best
antecedent might be ôSlip Awayö on 1996Æs undervalued Broken Arrow, an album
that shares a good few similarities, at least sonically, with Psychedelic Pill.
Verses here are strewn randomly across the rugged terrain, impressionistic
snippets from various rants and reveries about the acts of creation and
meditation, about ôblocking out my angerö and, evidently, succumbing to it.
ôDonÆt want my MP3,ö he protests at one stage (somewhat ironically, given how
Psychedelic Pill can only be reviewed as a digital stream), before complaining
about the use of Picasso in wallpaper design. Much, much later, he will
announce, bafflingly, ôGonna get me a hip-hop haircut,ö and eventually conclude,
more plausibly, ôFinding my religion/I might be a pagan...ö
As a method of repelling the sceptics, itÆs hard to think of a more effective
album opener than ôDriftinÆ Backö in anyoneÆs catalogue. For those faithful
Rusties who relished the ôHorse Backö jam û a horizontal, 37-minute
extrapolation of ôFuckinÆ Upö and ôCortez The Killerö, posted on neilyoung.com
this January to herald the return of Crazy Horse û the good news is that
Psychedelic Pill features three more new classics in that unhurried, expansive
style. Two of them, ôRamada Innö and ôWalk Like A Giantö, will already be
familiar to fans whoÆve listened assiduously to bootlegs of the recent Crazy
Horse American tour.
ôRamada Innö (16:50) is the more tender of the pair, with an
uncharacteristically nuanced and coherent narrative about a long-term
relationship being tested by alcoholism. The presence in recent setlists of
ôLove And Only Loveö, from 1990Æs Ragged Glory, gives a clue as to the elegaic
tone that Young conjures up with both his voice and his guitar, and the
gentleness that he solicits from his traditionally rough and ready bandmates.
Meanwhile, ôWalk Like A Giantö (16:29; live, the Arc-style clanging finale
stretches for ten more minutes) finds YoungÆs questing solos brought back down
to earth by a jauntily whistled refrain.
The subject matter will be familiar from many of the vigorous and strange albums
Young has made since Greendale in 2003 û namely, the failure of his generation
to deliver on their strident promises to save the world. ôI used to walk like a
giant on the land,ö he sings, ôNow I feel like a leaf floating on the stream.ö
But if the lyrics allude to defeat, he manifestly still believes in the
transformative possibilities of an electric guitar solo. As ôWalk Like A Giantö
sputters to its conclusion, he has rarely sounded so furious, and so potent.
In contrast, the fourth lengthy track, ôSheÆs Always Dancingö, is a comparative
trinket, clocking in at 8:33. Evidently delighted by ôDriftinÆ BacköÆs opening
gambit, Young repeats the trick, letting an a capella intro be consumed by
another torrid and ecstatic jam, this one in the vein of ôLike A Hurricaneö. The
protagonist, a hazily-drawn free spirit much given to ôburningö, is very like
the woman in the ôshiny dressö who practises her ôparty movesö in the title
track. ôPsychedelic Pillö itself is pretty flimsy stuff, in which Young finds a
decent riff and lets a fragment of a tune cling on to it for dear life: he even
introduced it, during an August show at Red Rocks, Colorado, by admitting, ôItÆs
a new song but it sounds exactly like an old song. I donÆt even know what it
is.ö ôCinnamon Girlö might be the reflex answer, but an even closer analogue is
ôSign Of Loveö from Le Noise (2010). The thinnest song on the album, Young
stubbornly plays it twice, once in a ôPhased Mixö that subjects the entire track
to strafing effects, presumably in a stab at psychedelic resonance, or else as a
crude, homebrewed response to Daniel LanoisÆ sonic gerrymandering on Le Noise.
ôTwisted Roadö is a good-natured amble through nostalgic reference points (ôLike
A Rolling Stoneö, Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, ôlistening to the Dead on the
radioö), written for what became the Le Noise sessions: Crazy Horse reportedly
rehearsed it before they were dismissed in favour of LanoisÆ gadgetry. ôFor The
Love Of Manö, a heartfelt bit of schmaltz, is Psychedelic PillÆs ôHitchhikerö or
ôOrdinary Peopleö - an unreleased curio plucked from the archives and revamped,
for obscure reasons. Bootleg live versions of ôFor The Love Of Manö, often
called ôI Wonder Whyö, date it from 1981, and it shares an inspiration û YoungÆs
son Ben, who has cerebral palsy - with that yearÆs Re-Ac-Tor, if not a style.
Psychedelic Pill runs for nearly 88 minutes, across two CDs, three vinyl
records, or one of YoungÆs beloved Blu-Ray discs. ItÆs the work of a man still
preoccupied with concepts of liberty, who still feels the need û both
spiritually and, it seems, financially û to work, but who has engineered himself
into a position where he can carry out his business with extraordinary freedom.
Jonathan Demme, the director who has now collaborated on three films with Young,
told Jaan Uhelszki, ôBefore Neil had the aneurysm [in 2005] he told me he used
to feel like a giant, and now he feels like a leaf in the streamà It was a
watershed moment. ItÆs allowed him to take bigger risks.ö
To some, Psychedelic Pill will seem like a monumental work of self-indulgence.
To others, though, its heft and eccentricity make it one of the purest
expressions of YoungÆs genius to date. At its centre is one last song, a cranky,
boisterous little country number called ôBorn In Ontarioö, which compresses the
themes of this enthralling record into a digestible nugget distantly related to
ôEverybody Knows This Is Nowhereö. ôBorn In Ontarioö breezily encompasses roots,
family, rough-hewn philosophy, the pursuit of freedom, life on the road, and the
consolations of writing: ôOnce in a while, when things go wrong/ I pick up a
pen, scribble on a page/Try to make sense of my inner rage.ö
Like many things that Neil Young sings, it comes across as rather facile on
paper. In the context of this mammoth album, though, juxtaposed against so much
eloquent and emotional guitarplay, it encapsulates the joy, depth and paradox of
Psychedelic Pill: an album, inspired by the writing of a book, that is at its
most profound when the words are swamped by a great, irresistible weight of
music.