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) I had become very spoiled by Neil Young's prolificacy.
Since I started following his career in 1971, he had
delivered albums of new material at the rate of almost one
per year. There had never been two consecutive calendar
years without a new album of new songs. Well, Broken Arrow
was released in July of 1996. There was no new album in
1997 (not counting live albums here.) None in 1998. There
would have been a new Neil Young album in 1999 but for the
next project with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young; but the
next full album of new material by Neil Young would not be
released until 2000. It was almost four full years between
Broken Arrow and Silver And Gold. Not that Neil didn't
play a lot of new material in the interim...Back to that
project with CSNY.
Neil was working on and perhaps finished with his next
album when he decided to make another album and tour with
CSNY. My understanding is that he showed them the songs on
the new album and they picked a few tracks and added some
harmony vocals and they became CSNY tracks. Looking
Forward (the album} and tour that followed were promoted
heavily. The album, truth be known, never really caught on
with me. I had heard 3 of the 4 Neil contributions live
during the great solo tour of '99 and the CSN harmonies I
found to be actually distracting in the songs Looking
Forward, Slowpoke, and Out Of Control. Not many of the
Crosby or Stills or Nash songs really made much of an
impression with me. I remember someone on Rust posting
that Neil's vocal on the last song, Sanibel, sounds like
Kermit The Frog and I couldn't get that out of my head
today while listening.
Some songs are ok, I guess. I do like the Neil songs (I
admit to even liking Queen Of Them All for it's upbeat
melody and theme); Crosby's Dream For Him and Stills' Seen
Enough are ok. I would like Sanibel except for that Neil
vocal, but oh well. I have thought for a long time that
CSN are a fine group by themselves; Neil does not bring
much to their group that they can't do already and they
frankly don't add much to his music. I remember even back
in '77 when the CSN "boat" album came out, being happy to
have that one PLUS ASnB instead of a CSNY record with just
a few Neil songs. Better to have two full albums, one with
CSN and one Neil Young record.
I did find parts of the 1999 album pleasant though. And
for those moments, I very much enjoyed listening to
Looking Forward today.
Mike - Expecting To Fly
From: Mike Cordova
To: rust@rustlist.org
Subject: Albums in order: Looking Forward
For more of Expecting To Fly's reviews, see the Albums in Order series.
More on the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
Neil Young - Thrasher's Wheat Archives: A Fan's Un Official Pages