Neil Young Albums ReviewsIn 2004 Rustie, Mike "Expecting 2 Fly" Cordova posted a series of articles on his experience listening to all of Neil Young's albums in chronological order. Here is one in the series. For a complete listing, see Albums in Order reviews.
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 14:51:36 -0800 (PST) A large component of Neil's reputation as a musician,
songwriter, and singer in the public's eye has been as a
member of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Amazingly,
through mid 1988 Neil Young had only made one studio album
with that band, Deja Vu which was released way back in
1970. And on that album, he did not play on all the tracks
and only wrote two and a half of the songs. Neil had over
the years followed his muse, done his thing, made his own
statement musically. He had made some statements regarding
his buddy David Crosby that if Cros was able to clean up
his act, that he would again perform and record with that
group again. I saw CSNY on tv in 1985 at Farm Aid. I know
the band thinks this performance was poor, but I actually
kind of liked it; great to see them. It gave me goosebumps
to see these four from the early 70's performing again; so
what if the playing wasn't perfect. I saw them live in
1986 at the very first Bridge School Benefit. It was
nostalgia-city, but it was a very enjoyable, if short,
performance.
So here in 1988, right after the TNFY album comes this new
CSNY album, American Dream. I remember hearing a huge
radio interview with the band with some of them saying
that "oh yeah, this one's better than Deja Vu" and all
that. I bought the album as soon as it came out and played
it with eager anticipation...
Really, I found that this album featured some good music.
But as an album, it was kind of a dud. Neil's songs were
good, were solid. But similar to the Stills/Young episode
in the previous decade, it turned out that Neil was
sitting on some of the greatest unreleased songs in his
catalog when he made this record and he held back some
great songs from this record (60 to Zero, Ordinary People,
Days That Used To Be, for example). Just as well, the
songs from CSN while good in some cases, were not up to
the standards of Neil's songs. There is an air of
spottiness in the quality of the songs on American Dream.
The songs that really make this album for me are the title
track by Neil, Got It Made by Stills, Compass by Crosby,
Soldiers Of Peace by Nash, and Feel Your Love by Neil.
This Old House by Neil is a great song but it was IMHO SO
SO much better when performed with the International
Harvesters (I had seen and recorded it on Farm Aid I in
'85). The rest of the album was kind of forced and
unconvincing artistically to me.
One recent happening regarding this album. I was listening
to a self-made compilation of all of Neil's contributions
to CSNY albums in the year 2003 and noticed Feel Your Love
as being especially appealing. I mentioned to a very
close, dear Rustie friend that it would be very nice if
Neil would play that one. My Rustie friend mentioned that
he had played it the previous night for the first time
live (part of the acoustic Greendale tour.) I couldn't
believe it. The first time ever played live and I had
mentioned it on a whim the very next day. One of those
Neil moments for me, for sure.
There are parts of this album that are pure genius and so
much more that's just not so good. Oh well. In any case, I
very much enjoyed listening to American Dream today.
Mike - Expecting To Fly
From: Mike Cordova
To: rust@rustlist.org
Subject: Albums in order: American Dream
For more of Expecting To Fly's reviews, see the Albums in Order series.
Neil Young Archives - Thrasher's Wheat