Neil Young Reviews of AlbumsIn 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) Back in '93, I attended a couple of the shows in which
Neil played with Booker T. and the MG's. That tour was
electric, loud and I felt that the band came around to
Neil's style of music pretty much. Now, here in 2002, Neil
finally made an album with the band, albeit with a new
lineup featuring Poncho on guitar instead of Steve Cropper
and Steve Potts on drums instead of Jim Keltner. AYP?
features a sound reminiscent of 60s soulfulness.
Before this album came out, the terrorists attacks on
9-11-01 took place and Neil responded to that almost
immediately with the single (available at the time by
download) release of Let's Roll. Musically, it's a
relatively uninteresting song and it has some lyrics that
are troubling. But the theme of support for the passenger
uprising against the terrorists was at some level
admirable. I wanted so much to like this song more than I
do. Fortunately, most of AYP? sounds nothing like Let's
Roll.
The opening number, You're My Girl, starts out promising
even if it does sound similar to the This Note's For You
song Sunny Inside and has a tender coming-of-age lyric
that is sweet. But the high, whiny lead vocal kills it for
me. The next three songs though are powerful and moving.
For me, Mr. Disappointment, Differently, and Quit (Don't
Say You Love Me) are all very compelling musically and in
their ways they explore areas Neil had not before then
touched upon. Then there's Let's Roll which at least here
includes an interesting guitar part at the end. The title
track has me going for most of the song until he gets to
the "soldier in the sky" letting his 'mis-"aisle"' fly
part, then I sort of lose interest in the song.
Goin' Home
was a track apparantly left over from a track for an
aborted album w/Crazy Horse with the working title
"Toast", recorded in Toast studios. It's a great track,
though, but I agree that there were performances in the
'01 Euro tour that put this one to shame. But one can say
similar things about many songs over the course of Neil's
career. I enjoy this album version even as I agree with
those that love the live versions. The next three tracks
don't really move me a great deal, but the last song,
She's A Healer, is a great one. Wow, that one has a bluesy
groove and some different instrumentation and one of my
favorite lines of lyric from Neil:
I was very, very fortunate to have seen this one performed
live at the Brixton Academy in England in May of 2002
along with dozens of other Rusties. The performance of
She's A Healer was one of the highlights of this show for
me.
AYP? is one of the longest albums in Neil's catalog. I
actually think he could have pared a few tracks and this
would have been considered a much better album. But even
in it's present form, I very much enjoyed listening to Are
You Passionate? today.
Mike - Expecting To Fly
From: Mike Cordova
To: rust@rustlist.org
Subject: Albums in order: Are You Passionate?
"Way out on the prairie
back where the wheat fields grow,
I stop to slap plastic at an Esso station,
About a thousand miles from my destination"
For more of Expecting To Fly's reviews, see the Albums in Order series.
Neil Young - Thrasher's Wheat Archives: A Fan's Un Official Pages