Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Ragged Glory
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Members who requested this CD also requested: Album Review Having re-established his reputation with the musically varied, lyrically enraged Freedom, Neil Young returned to being the lead guitarist of Crazy Horse for the musically homogenous, lyrically hopeful Ragged Glory. The album's dominant sound was made by Young's noisy guitar, which bordered on and sometimes slipped over into distortion, while Crazy Horse kept up the songs' bright tempos. Despite the volume, the tunes were catchy, with strong melodies and good choruses, and they were given over to love, humor, and warm reminiscence. They were also platforms for often extended guitar excursions: "Love to Burn" and "Love and Only Love" ran over ten minutes each, and the album as a whole lasted nearly 63 minutes with only ten songs. Much about the record had a retrospective feel -- the first two tracks, "Country Home" and "White Line," were newly recorded versions of songs Young had played with Crazy Horse but never released in the '70s; "Mansion on the Hill," the album's most accessible track, celebrated a place where "psychedelic music fills the air" and "peace and love live there still"; there was a cover of the Premiers' garage rock oldie "Farmer John"; and "Days That Used to Be," in addition to its backward-looking theme, borrowed the melody from Bob Dylan's "My Back Pages" (by way of the Byrds' arrangement), while "Mother Earth (Natural Anthem)" was the folk standard "The Water Is Wide" with new, environmentally aware lyrics. Young was not generally known as an artist who evoked the past this much, but if he could extend his creative rebirth with music this exhilarating, no one was likely to complain. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide Credits
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Luke J. (Neil Young stands as one of the great "anti-heroes" of rock. For over 3 decades, he's played pretty much what he wanted, with very little regard for whether or not it was "commerical". Despite their attitude, Neil Young and Crazy Horse managed to rack up a huge string of hits, and a large fan following anyhow. While Neil and his band are grateful for the support (and the 'counrty homes' and all that comes with success in rock and roll), they still refuse to "sell out" and do comfortable pop tunes. Instead, from time to time, they unleash a thunderbolt. This CD is one such thunderbolt.
This one captures Neil Young and Crazy Horse at what they do best-- grunge. Released almost a year before Nirvana's (equally stellar) major label debut CD, this CD makes the recent material from so called heavy rock bands like Aerosmith and Van Halen sound almost wimpy by comparison.*
Perhaps the reason Neil Young and Crazy horse don't do "battles of the bands" is that their firepower is so overwhelming, it would simply destroy most of the competition after they played the first few bars.
Suffice to say, this is an awesome piece of hard rock, done by one of that genre's true masters of the art. While Neil & Crazy Horse have done grungy metal for decades (on Everyone Knows This is Nowhere, Rust Never Sleeps, and several other CD's), they've never quite captured their live energy and intensity as well as they did here.
After you hear the new grunge guys (Alice in Chains, The Cult, and possibly Soundgarden), listen to the old man, and he'll teach you how this music should really be played. Except for Nirvana (who are tragically, gone) none of the newer grunge artists have equalled this CD for sheer songwriting, musicianship, intensity, and edginess.
* Just for the record, I like a lot of Aerosmith & Van Halen's works.