Neil Young Greendale DVD Reviews

Neil Young News

Young turns bonus video into a main attraction
Sept. 9, 2003 12:00 AM

'Live at Vicar St.'

****

Neil Young (Reprise)

You can't get this title at your local record store
unless you buy Neil Young's latest album, Greendale.
But this isn't your typical bonus DVD, which is
becoming standard fare with CDs to give them an extra
push in sales.

Most such DVDs contain four or five live tracks, maybe
a music video, someone's home movie of the recording
process and a few interviews. Live at Vicar St.,
however, is a 100-minute solo acoustic performance of
Greendale, taken from a stop in Dublin at the
beginning of Young's current tour. That's a longer
show than many stand-alone concert DVDs.

And this is better than most of those, as well.

In case you missed the news about Greendale, it's a
concept album, a musical novel as Young likes to say,
about events in a mythical California town that
galvanize a young woman's environment activism.

Young took the show on a summerlong tour with his
band, Crazy Horse, drawing the ire of some fans who
wanted to hear the old hits but instead were greeted
with an opening hour and a half of stuff they hadn't
heard before. By the time Young stopped in Phoenix in
August, fans knew what to expect (even though the disc
still hadn't been released) and embraced Young's
experiment.

This show lacks some of the emotional and musical
punch of that performance, which is to be expected
when you trade in Young's phrasing on the electric
guitar and Crazy Horse's full sound for a one-man
acoustic show. But the trade-off is a playful,
sometimes rambling Young setting up each song with
story, sipping Guinness and laying his new work out
there, occasional warts and all.

It's a great evening, and the DVD is worth the price
of the album, which you may just want to check out, as
well.

- Tracy Collins/

The Arizona Republic

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