Neil Young "peace trail"

[CRAZY-HORSE]

NEIL YOUNG "peace trail"

Spotify listen:

solo set number thirty seven from Uncle Neil...
and with Stills-Young, CSNY, Buffalo Springfield, movie soundtracks
his career output is over fifty albums in fifty years...
this is his twelfth release in the last decade....
so,
mainly acoustic with guitar, percussion, bass, harmonica and vocals...
opening track harks back to the distorted "le noise" album,
but thankfully theres no Daniel Lanoise here to stuff things up further...
Rick Rubin is involved though, not that Rick is a bad thing for any artist IMO...
songs range in subject matter from his divorce after almost forty years
of marriage, it appears he is shifting all blame on to her in some lines,
a couple of loosely themed tracks about the environment, the big corporations
taking over farms etc...same old 'yawn' stuff he's been pissed off about for a while
now...
and the album closer "my new robot"....WTF is that all about,
he warbles about purchasing a robot from "amazon dot com" which basically replaces Peggy,
then after about a minute of stupid lyrics we hear a females voice saying "power on",
then its on to vocorder vocal effects as if the robot is talking, then finally after a couple of minutes of this
we hear the emale voice say "power off", and that's the end of the album...seriously!
very little melody on the album as a whole, sounds like an immature teenager putting minimal music
to some stupid poetry he wrote in his bedroom, but as Neil sings in another song
from the album in "cant stop workin' ", he has nothing else to do but to work...
all up, in the words of one of his songs from a couple of decades ago...."its a piece of crap"
but yes, I will buy it eventually, when its on discount to keep my NY collection complete.

from the album: my favourite track

[video=youtube;CM-NkM-dIDA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM-NkM-dIDA[/video]

[CRAZY-HORSE]

so I listened again, as I would....

im still not keen on the album but there is a lot happening...

loosely veiled acoustic protest songs...

songs about this generation's constant need to be on the Facebook, their phones etc...

songs of wealth, power, and greed..

songs of the environment....

songs about his divorce....

its basically a grumpy old man who cant let go of the "inner hippy" who appears to think the survival of planet earth
depends on the likes of him to speak the word so people can hear it....
that's all fine and idealistic when your twenty-five or so but when your sales have 'tanked' youre gonna be lucky if one hundred thousand
people out of six billion hear the message....

sorry Neil, but its time to sod off and retire...
you once said "its better to burn out, than to fade away", well im here to tell you, you haven't burnt out, much to late for that, instead,
youre 'fading away', my my, hey hey, how things chage (but still remain the same!)

[Music Head]

entered the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart last week at #76

his lowest ranking debut in this country
hoping he takes the hint
actually this would come in at a low like score for me
certainly an improvement over the worst of his output
agree with CH about that robot track
thought I had my worst track settled on Texas Rangers until that closed it out

fav for me

[video=youtube;XTQVyymj_Zs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTQVyymj_Zs[/video]

[Oceansoul]

Music can be a channel for frustration as well as spreading awareness. I don't think Neil Young is wrong. I think using mindfulness when it comes to making choices is a good idea.

Unchecked materialism is a problem (and so is greed). It can become economically unsustainable and yes, it can affect the environment. I don't think it's about being a hippie, but being smart and thinking ahead. I'm not saying that humans should ditch technology and go back to nature either.

Anyway, that's just my opinion.