Reviews of Neil Young 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)
From: Mike Cordova
To: rust@rustlist.org
Subject: Albums in order: Broken Arrow
In the mid 90's, I was starting to become conscious of Neil's age. Neil Young is, within 2 months, ten years older than me and this recognition was in no small part a realization of my own mortality. In any case I was wonderin' in early '96 of course what Neil's career would take now that he was on the far side of 50. And then one of those significant landmark events in my life of following Neil took place, perhaps the most significant since discovering ATGR in 1971 and the wealth of material that had preceded it; I joined the Rust List!
It was actually quite an exciting time when I started on Rust. Neil and Crazy Horse were playing a stretch of shows at the tiny Old Princeton Landing (aka OPL) bar in Princeton-By-The-Sea (part of or very near Half Moon Bay) in California. David Briggs, longtime Neil producer, had sadly passed away recently, and the band got back together for these dates and to rehearse and record new material for the next album. I quickly discovered music trading (analog cassettes back then) and was entranced with how easy it was to trade for live shows from throughout Neil's career and even to get some great sounding tapes of the OPL shows.
Thus I became aware that a new album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse was in the works. Since the shows were heavy on material from Zuma and Neil and the band seemed pretty intense from the first-hand reports from the OPL I was reading on Rust, I was expecting the album to be Zuma-ish. It wasn't, but then that was ok too. I've learned to enjoy and like Broken Arrow for what it does offer. I remember well the first song I heard from the album. On my way back from buying tickets at a venue for a Neil concert later that year (I got up at 3am to try to get good seats and pretty much succeeded) the radio station I was listening to played Big Time, a song I had heard about but had not yet been able to listen to. Around this time as well, I became aware that Interstate would be a bonus track on the BA vinyl; I had just become aware that this song from over 10 years before even existed and I already loved that tune.
The album itself is a bit, as one of the songs is titled, scattered. There are songs that evoke the memory of David Briggs and a commitment to continue (Big Time, Scattered.) There is the song that refers I think, to the OPL shows in soaring fashion, Slip Away ("The smoke in the barroom nights, The faces in the window, The sound of the harbor horn, She recognized.") There are minor tunes like Changing Highways and This Town; both entertaining enough in their own ways but not really in a deep-insight kind of way. I like the song Loose Change. The instrumental that ends it has been proclaimed by some to be repetitive and it is, but I find it hypnotic and mesmerizing. The cover of Jimmy Reed's Baby What You Want Me To Do is a good one and special because it was recorded at the OPL and it has a lead guitar part by Poncho.
Music Arcade, the only acoustic tune on the album, has always been special to me. He played it at almost every concert in '96, but not much if ever since. The lyrics, every time I hear them, find a home in my head, with my life and the things in my life and the things I think about. There were a couple of great comets in the 1996 skies and Neil mentions comets in Music Arcade and in Scattered as well. Anyway, Music Arcade is one of my very favorite Neil Young tunes.
I very much enjoyed listening to Broken Arrow today.
Mike - Expecting To Fly
For more of Expecting To Fly's reviews, see the Albums in Order series.
Neil Young - Thrasher's Wheat Archives