Top 100 Albums of the 19702 - #65 - Neil Young - On The Beach (1974)

I wasn't a Neil Young fan when I started this list. I found his voice too high-pitched and his songs too folky for my liking. But the more I listen to, the more I consider myself a convert. In particular, Young's simple yet inventive approach to guitar solos is inspiring. One of the things I always loved about Keith Richards was his ability to do great things with just a handful of notes. Young takes it a step further, sometimes soloing on just one or two notes, yet managing to wring emotion and creativity out of his guitar nevertheless.

On The Beach achieved something of a mythical status due to two decades of unavailability. For reasons as opaque as his lyrics, Young refused to issue the album on CD until 2003, when a massive petition by fans finally convinced him. Most "lost" albums fail to live up to the imaginations of fans, but it must be admitted thta this one is pretty good. A tight, bluesy seven songs that blend rock, country, and the bitter invective of Young's lyrics. Like Elvis Costello, he manages to be nasty will style sounding pleasant, which is really the trick to this kind of music.

The opener, Walk On, has hit single written all over it, with its catchy chorus and bouncy bass guitar part. The rootsy, banjo-driven For The Turnstiles would sound out of place on most rock albums, but works great here in spite of, or because of, the fact that it sounds like it could have been recorded sometime around the 1920s.

Throughout, the band is excellent, particularly the rhythm section consisting of multiple players on bass and drums. They know how to compliment Young's soloing without overpowering it. Sure, this band is not Crazy Horse, but I'm not sure their aggressive style would have worked well with these songs anyway.

Like the cover art, the title track plays around with the juxtaposition of opposites. It would be easy to think that a record called On The Beach would be a fun-in-the-sun party album. Instead, we get associations that are less frequently made, but no less apt. Words like "windy", "stranded", "exposed" and "bleak" come to mind. The fact that three of the song titles contain the word "blues" is surely no accident. This is not a happy Neil Young

Young originally wanted the two sides of the record reversed, making Vampire Blues the record's closer, and the title track its opener.} I think the running order as released is more powerful, however, as it moves from the almost happy Walk On through various levels of depression, through the mournful harmonica and clip-clop drums of Motion Pictures that sound like an actual farewell.

Finally, the album concludes with the 8-minute dirge of Ambulance Blues. This running order presents a more linear progression that takes the listener on a journey rather than just being a collection of songs. On The Beach is a melancholy album to be sure, but there's something not altogether hopeless about it too. As other reviewers have pointed out, this was Neil Young saying goodbye to despair and choosing to Walk On to more cheerful pastures.

Top 100 Albums of the 1970s - #99 - Neil Young - After the Gold Rush (1970)

I'm relatively new to the world of Neil Young. After hearing Cowgirl in the Sand on the radio a few years ago, I purchased the predecessor to After the Gold Rush, 1969's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, and I enjoy that record thoroughly. After the Gold Rush is my second Young acquisition, and the first thing I'm struck by is the change in mood as the decade rolled over from the 1960s to the 1970s.

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere is not without its dark moments, but there's a hopeful energy, and even playfulness to songs like Cinnamon Girl. On After the Gold Rush, Young seems to have matured, and in doing so, become considerably gloomier. The lyrics here deal with environmental catastrophe, loneliness, and racism. The instrumentation is sparse, and Young's voice is high and plaintive throughout. The whole thing is a little bit of a downer, which is not to say that it's not great.

One of things I appreciate in an album is the ability to hang together as a unified artistic statement, not just a collection of songs. The seventies were a particularly fertile time for this, the concept of "album rock" having been pioneered just a few years earlier by a combination of the Beatles, whose Rubber Soul inspired Brian Wilson to write a record with no filler, and the Beach Boys, whose resulting Pet Sounds spurred Paul McCartney to create Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. After the Gold Rush succeeds mightily in this department, sounding completely unified, even as the major songs are divided by short fragments like Till the Morning Comes and Cripple Creek Ferry, this last being an oddly bright and carefree conclusion to an otherwise dark record.

Speaking of Brian Wilson, the waltz-time Only Love Can Break Your Heart is something that would not have been out of place on a late period Beach Boys album, with its simple charm and 3/4 time melody, a rarity for rock albums, even ones as folk-influenced as this one. It's not the only song on the record to employ waltz time, either. In the album's lone cover version, Oh, Lonesome Me is perhaps best known for Johnny Cash's performance, a typical mid-tempo lament backed by the ubiquitous chugga-chugga-chugga of Cash's guitar. Young transforms the song and makes it his own in a way that only the very best covers succeed in doing (think Jimi Hendrix's definitive recording of Bob Dylan's All Along the Watchtower). Young slows the tempo way down and takes the rhythm from 4/4 to 3/4. He also sings it like he means it. He really sounds lonesome.  If you didn't know better, you'd never guess that he didn't write the thing.

Mention must be made of the title track, which feels like an epic even though it's less than four minutes long. It's classic Neil Young, composed of a haunting melody, cryptic lyrics, and a painfully tender vocal performance. The song is played entirely on piano, with the exception of a flugelhorn solo midway through. Why flugelhorn? Why not a more conventional choice, like saxophone, guitar, or even a string section? I don't know what inspired him to make this decision, but inspired it is. The horn sounds lonely and just foreign enough to perfectly capture the emotion of the song in a way that other choices wouldn't. It's little touches like that that make the album so interesting.

The other standout track I'd like to mention is Southern Man, the only track on the album that could be fairly described as "rocking". Lyrically, it's a diatribe about racism in the American South that inspired Lynyrd Skynyrd to reply with an affectionate defense of their homeland, Sweet Home Alabama. Good for you, Lynyrd Skynyrd! Musically, I have to admit that I enjoy it more than anything else here. Young is an underrated guitarist who manages to extract a great amount of feeling from very simply solos, and this is really the only chance you get on the record to hear that aspect of his musicianship. I would have liked to hear more.

Neil Young may not be my favorite artist on this list, but I can certainly appreciate a well-crafted record when I hear one, and After the Gold Rush delivers, both in terms of songwriting, production, and performance. I will revisit Young later in this project when it's time to review On the Beach (which I have not heard yet). It will be interesting to see how it compares.