90. Neil Young, "After the Gold Rush"

 

Man, it must suck to be in Crazy Horse.  One day, you're just gigging behind Neil Young, touring the world, drinking Martini & Rossi Asti Spumante and smoking the world's best weed and the next it's pink slips all around and you're just an out of work musician while your boss retreats to his Topanga Canyon property where he's built a studio in the basement and starts recording one of his best albums without you.  (Don't worry, you'll be back.  And fired again.  And back.  You're basically the Billy Martin and the Yankees of roots rock.)

Well, one Crazy Horse member played on this record, drummer Ralph Molina, along with CSNY bassist Greg Reeves and guitar prodigy Nils Lofgren, who Neil shunted off to play piano, an instrument he had no real experience with.  But Neil Young being Neil Young, the alchemical result was this dreamy, brilliant collection of songs, powered largely by Young's guitar and voice.  On the title track, the second song, Young's vocals strain and stretch to high notes that compliment the themes of the song, the breakdown of the natural order and of Young himself:

I was lyin' in a burned out basement
With the full moon in my eyes
I was hopin' for replacement
When the sun burst though the sky
There was a band playin' in my head
And I felt like getting high
I was thinkin' about what a friend had said
I was hopin' it was a lie
Thinkin' about what a friend had said
I was hopin' it was a lie

The next song, "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" (with backing vocals from fellow CSNY member Stephen Stills) has a gentle melody and a sad message for those of you who thought love would save you.  It's followed by "Southern Man," the longest song on the album, a direct shot at the Southern racists impeding the progress of the Civil Rights movement.  It's angry in lyric and sound:

I saw cotton and I saw black
Tall white mansions and little shacks
Southern man, when will you pay them back?
I heard screaming and bullwhips cracking
How long? How long? 

Lynyrd Skynyrd famously wrote "Sweet Home Alabama" in response to this song (along with Young's "Alabama," from 1972's Harvest), but Young probably got the better of that exchange.

There's one cover, "Oh, Lonesome Me," a 1958 song by Don Gibson and Chet Atkins that Young slowed down and, in doing so, revealed the sad heart of the song that Gibson tried to cover up by sounding chipper.  It's two different ways of handling sadness and when given that choice, you bet Young is going to shoot straight for the heart.

The last song, "Cripple Creek Ferry," is one of the last vestiges of the original idea behind the idea, a soundtrack for a never-produced film.  It's short, only about a minute and a half, but full of verve and melody and I would like to see the movie that this was going to soundtrack (the only other soundtrack song that survived was the title track).  

This is widely regarded as one of the best Neil Young albums, and I can see it; it's got a lot of heart and a raw, stripped-down feel.  You can imagine yourself in the room with these guys and a couple bottles of beer and a joint on a sunny afternoon, just playing some songs.  

Is this album in my personal Top 500? Yes.