Neil Young’s decade in the 80s wilderness could have been the end of his career. Instead, he bounced back with a stunning comeback. He managed to return to his strengths without indulging in mere imitation of his glory days like the Stones have been doing forever. In fact, Young became a part of the burgeoning grunge thing in the early 90s. Sonic Youth opened for him, he cut a record with Pearl Jam, and his own work sounded like it came from the present rather than from the past. In this period I became a fan, listening not only to the classics, but also to his new output, which I considered just as good. Like Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, Young did not just "come back," he produced new work that could proudly stand tall next to the stuff that had made him famous. Ironically, he found new relevance by returning to the kind of sounds that had made him famous in the first place.
Freedom, 1989
Right from the first chords of the acoustic version of “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World” you just know that the man is back, baby. Not only is it one of his best songs, he dropped it in the same year the Berlin Wall fell. In the midst of all the self-congratulation he wrote the most searing critique of Reagan’s America to make it on the radio this side of “Fast Car.” There’s some other good songs here, especially “Crime In The City.” Some of this record is spotty and uneven, but it is a bona fide Neil Young record, his first in ten years.
Rating: Four Neils
Ragged Glory, 1990 with Crazy Horse
This was the first contemporary Neil Young album I bought and also the first with Crazy Horse I'd ever listened to. I was already a huge Hendrix fan and the guitar tone on this record gave me the same thrill. Young and the Horse sound amazing, like the best garage band that's ever trod the earth. Appropriately, it starts with two songs he wrote in the Zuma days of the mid 70s. Young and the Horse sound like the last ten years hadn't even happened. Appropriately, some of the songs express nostalgia for the sixties, like “The Days That Used To Be” and “Mansion on the Hill,” but this is no throwback. It fits in quite comfortably with the whole grunge sound of the time. The extended rocking out on a couple tracks also mirrors the growing jam band scene of the time. While those workouts maybe don't thrill the people who come to Neil for his directness, they are far from boring. When performed live it gets even wilder and better.
Rating: Five Neils
Way Down in the Rust Bucket, recorded in 1990 and released in 2021 with Crazy Horse
This live show is an entry in the Archives series and it really blew me away. I hadn't heard this one since embarking on this project, and it now might be my favorite Neil Young live album. It comes from a show at a small venue in Santa Cruz, where Young and the Horse were warming up for their tour. As I have noticed time and again, Young's live performances add a lot to the songs, especially if he is vibing with the audience. It's an appreciative crowd, and Young's guitar work sounds amazing. The Horse is locked in tight, too. The new material from Ragged Glory sounds even better live, with the solos and jams bringing the songs to new heights. I also appreciate the song choices. It's not just the old warhorses, but also the likes of the infamous "T-Bone," which live at a club sounds fun instead of plodding. Albums like this are why the Archives series is such a gift.
Rating: Five Neils
Weld, 1991 with Crazy Horse
After Ragged Glory Young rode the Horse out on a well-received tour. Sonic Youth opened, a sign that he was not just some geezer but a man who appreciated and supported the younger musicians influenced by him. While this is not as thrilling as Rust Bucket, it's still really damn good. Young gets adventurous, especially on "Like a Hurricane." I remember seeing a report about the tour on MTV News and I was sort of in awe of this group of aging men who were really letting it rip in a wild way that their geezer peers could not attain. I only have to ding this one a little for not being too inventive with the song choices, which are all the most well-known or new in the catalog. The exceptions are an anti-Gulf War cover of "Blowin' In The Wind" and a spirited "Roll Another Number" that closes things out.
Rating: Four and a Half Neils
Harvest Moon, 1992
While Comes a Time could have been the sequel to Harvest, Harvest Moon very much feels like an official one, twenty years later. It was fitting for Young to make his comeback with Crazy Horse, and then extend that comeback with songs in his folkie vein. Being a middle-aged man, the themes have changed. "From Hank to Hendrix" is a profound song about the transitions of this precarious time in life, and to my mind one of his best ever. The title track is just a truly gorgeous love song, and a rare one about a long-lasting love. The only misstep is the album closer "Natural Beauty," which goes on for eleven minutes in the preachy hippie mode that Young will increasingly take in his lyrics going forward.
Rating: Four and a half Neils
Dreamin' Man Live '92, released in 2009
Here's another Archives series I'd missed, this time chronicling Young's solo acoustic shows after Harvest Moon. He is in fine voice, and as always his acoustic live sets are just as good as what he puts on record. I was even a little shocked that he managed to make "Natural Beauty" sound less ridiculous. The selections here are all from Harvest Moon, and I do really wish that we got some more catalog tracks so we could hear what he was doing with them at the time. Nevertheless, if you like Harvest Moon you will love this.
Rating: Four and a Half Neils
Unplugged, 1993
How to explain the "unplugged" phenomenon? In the early 90s, in the midst of a revival of more "authentic" rock music, MTV had a series where performers would give acoustic concerts. The results were sometimes pretty fantastic. Nirvana's appearance might be my favorite album of theirs and LL Cool J brought the house down with his. Neil Young was obviously the perfect person for this, and I remember really enjoying his episode at the time, particularly the gritty take on "Mr Soul." Around the same time he did a live show for PBS that I taped and loved for the songs where he brought out an organ. (He does so here, too.) While people have a tendency to poo-poo the Unplugged thing these days, I think this is a strong set with some surprising cuts, including an acoustic "Transformer Man."
Rating: Four Neils
Sleeps With Angels, 1994 with Crazy Horse
I didn't buy this album until a few months after it came out, and it became the soundtrack to my summer in 1995. I was back in my hometown after my first year of college, extremely lonely and bored. The dark tone, inspired by Kurt Cobain's suicide, fit my mood pretty well. This record is as close as Young got to the emotional Ditch after the the mid-1970s, and the title track, "Trans Am," "Safeway Cart," and "Driveby" would have fit in well on Tonight's The Night. Many songs explored the territory of "Crime in the City" and "Keep Rockin' in the Free World": the desperation of the people left behind by the inequalities of the neoliberal turn of the Reagan era. It's easy to think of the 90s as a carefree time of economic prosperity, but for those of us who were paying attention at the time, things didn't look so great. Kurt Cobain had been a hero of mine as his suicide hurt more than any death of any other famous person possibly could, and this record registers Young's own despair about it, too. This album does suffer a little from CD disease, in that it could be shorter. It's interesting that Young creates mirrors, like using old time piano on the first and last songs and the same tune for "Western Hero" and "Train of Love," but maybe we'd be better off with just one song from each pair. That being said, this album does not hearken back to Crazy Horse's garage adventures or Young's folkie roots; the sound is pretty unique and arresting. the avant-garde touches on "Prime of Life" and the gutter-punk snarl of "Piece Of Crap" still grab me (and my cousin's band performed the latter back in the 90s along with Pearl Jam and Nirvana tunes!) This album is among Young's best.
Rating: Four and a half Neils
Mirrorball, 1995 with Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam made no secret of their love of Neil Young, yet another thing that made him the coolest Boomer rocker to teenage me. I was really excited when they decided to cut a record together, it was a true "Hey, you got peanut butter on my chocolate!" moment. I still remember the first time I listened to it. I'd gone home from college over Labor Day weekend, which also coincides with my birthday. I got it as a birthday gift, and first listen was in my car driving back to college. A sunny Nebraska road trip was the perfect accompaniment, which is maybe why it just never sounded so good the other times I listened to it. Part of the problem was that my expectations were ridiculous. I had been grooving to Sleeps With Angels and Pearl Jam's Vitalogy that whole summer. While I liked Mirrorball, it just wasn't as good as those other albums. I ended up putting it aside and didn't really pick it up again, even though I thought it was good. Listening to it again now I am struck by how Pearl Jam and Young work well together, and Pearl Jam's, er, heightened musicianship compared to Crazy Horse allows for some new tricks. (Although on "Downtown" it sounds like Pearl Jam is really smelling the Horse.) I must admit, this album is better than I remember, definitely better than the records Young and Pearl Jam would put out next, even if it's not as good as the milestones they just passed.
Rating: Four Neils
Broken Arrow, 1996
I had been with Young for his 90s comeback up to this point, but I never bought this album. I saw a negative review and decided I should spend my hard-earned cash on Radiohead's The Bends instead (a wise choice.) In many respects this is a throwback to Young’s 80s: scattershot, weak songs, and not memorable. That said, any time Neil gets on the Horse and shreds with Old Black it’s too great to ever really be bad. I think it’s slightly better than its reputation, but not by much.
Rating: Three Neils
Year of the Horse, 1997 with Crazy Horse
I bought this double live album on CD because it was discounted. I liked it, but only OK, and it soon got traded in at the used CD store (remember those?).At the time people wondered why Young was putting out yet another live record. The fact that it draws tracks from Broken Arrow drags it down, but I did appreciate the more obscure selections, especially”Prisoners.” It still rocks hard, and it’s still the Horse, even if this isn’t nearly as good as Weld. The blistering take of "Sedan Delivery" almost gets us there.
Rating: Three and a half Neils
Looking Forward, 1999 with CSNY
I have to say I was dreading this one. The last CSNY record came at the end of Young's crappy 80s, and so the low quality of his work with Messers. Stills, Nash, and Crosby was not so much of a disappointment. This album is pretty undefined and uninteresting, and it comes after Young's renaissance decade had upped expectations. Some of these songs seem comically aimless. As usual, Young's contributions are the best, but they can't bring this thing enough life. Thankfully it was the last CSNY studio record.
Rating: One and a half Neils
Silver & Gold, 2000
I’m putting this one as the last of the “comeback” era because in this phase Young stuck with his two signature modes: folkie and rocking with the Horse. This album is definitely in the folkie mode, but he would soon return to divergent paths in the 21st century. Like Harvest Moon, this is pleasant and mellow, but the songs are not as good. It’s not bad, just uneven. Perhaps after putting out some just okay records in his regular modes, Young decided it was time to shake it up.
Rating: Three Neils
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