Neil Young's weakest album?

A Letter Home

 

I would pick the same ones except change out Long May You Run for Reactor.

 

Greendale

I know it's a story with a message and all that, but that's not an excuse to record an album with over 60 minutes of tuneless stuff.

 

"This notes for you" saw him on the tour, and still haven't recovered from Neil sings swing blues for 1 1/2 hours! Yuck

 

I think this is a useful thread because it could save some Neil Young fans like me from some very bitter disappointments. Out of many other serious contenders it’s “A Letter Home” for me, but not by a landslide. After all, there are a ton of turkeys out there and nowadays a new one is spit out more often than I go to Barnes & Noble. I wish I could say that I thought this thread could stem the tide of underwhelming, decidedly substandard Neil Young releases, but I don’t see that happening. He seems so wrapped up in his own headspace far too often. Even though I bought his first 15 or so albums, and devotedly listened to them regularly with great enjoyment and admiration, I have been regularly shocked and disappointed at a lot of his more recent output. And I must admit, the worst concert I have ever seen was Neil Young & Crazy Horse in Lake Tahoe about 7 or 8 years ago. It was the Psychedelic Pill period and the band played only instrumentals and Neil never spoke to the audience. Every song, it seemed, was an extended, feedback laden ear splitting jam. Before the concert was a half hour old, about half of the ticket buyers in attendance had left. Many of the rest of us who were trying to stick it out had moved to the back of the venue. My wife and I had driven a long way to the show with high expectations and were being joined by another Neil Young fan, an old college buddy of mine I hadn’t seen in a long time. It didn’t completely spoil our reunion, because we left in time to chat over some much-needed comfort food. The feelings I had after the concert were not unlike those I felt after my first listen to “A Letter Home.” I can summarize it with a simple WTF!!

I’m not saying I would never a Neil Young album again, but it would really take a strong recommendation from someone whose opinions I respect. But as far as Neil Young concerts are concerned, I’m done.

 

Neil Young is a true artist - as he’s followed his muse, everything he felt like exploring wouldn’t have resonated with every fan (including me).

For example, I think Silver & Gold, Peace Trail and Broken Arrow are you excellent listens, and the more lauded recent material is of course superb (Chrome Dreams II especially, but also Le Noise, Psychadelic Pill, and even Colorado). I even enjoyed Living with War and Monstanto, just about … BUT even as a huge fan of most of his catalogue, I haven’t been brave enough to even try listening to shaky 80s Neil … Trans, Reactor, Everybody’s Rockin etc, mainly due to the utterly dire listener consensus …

I hoped this thread and it’s vote count would make me ‘change my mind’ (apols. chrome dreams!), but sadly it seems not, and those are for true completists only.

 

If you didn't like the show, fine, but don't lie about it.

2012-08-09, Lake Tahoe Outdoor Arena at Harveys, Stateline, Nevada, USA
w/ Crazy Horse
Love And Only Love / Powderfinger / Born In Ontario / Walk Like A Giant / The Needle And The Damage Done / Twisted Road / For The Love Of Man / Ramada Inn / Cinnamon Girl / F*!#in' Up / Psychedelic Pill / Jesus' Chariot / Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black) // Over And Over

 

I know a lot of people are down on the Life album, but if you saw the 86 Rusted Garage tour, maybe people would have a better appreciation for it.

 

My problem with that album was that it sounded nothing like the tour. Great songs sabotaged in the studio.

 

Tonight’s the Night, way overrated, Everybody Is Rockin, Trans, Mirror Ball, all the stuff from 2000’s is and hit and miss, mostly miss.

 

Well, it's not BAD. At the very least, 80s Neil is somewhat enjoyable because of how daring he is with his music. Even if you don't like it, there is a certain charm in listening to electronic Neil in "Trans" or even rockabilly Neil in "Everybody's Rockin'" because those things are so out of the box that one would hardly dream it to be possible.

They're worth at least a listen. I can enjoy both these albums, but couldn't connect at all with "Landing on Water", for example. While "Trans" is 100% synth energy and true to its purpose, the latter seems just like misplaced production ruining otherwise good songs.

 

I enjoy 'Are You Passionate?' I think it's a fairly solid album. I'm not sure I understand the disdain that this album receives - especially when I see it receive the same number of votes as 'Fork In The Road' and more votes than 'Living With War' - both I find utterly rubbish.

On a completely unrelated note, I re-listened to Psychedelic Pill for the first time in ages in the weekend; The first disc is good but some of the tracks go on WAY too long (found myself getting bored). The second disc however is really really good - I enjoyed every moment and I can see myself returning to it more frequently. I think it might be my favourite album since Sleeps With Angels; certainly not a classic but a very good album all the same.

 

So, your "it's not BAD" (presumably, potentially lower case 'bad') was enough to get me to dip a toe this morning ... started chronologically with Re-act-tor, and aided by negligible expectations, it was absolutely somewhat enjoyable (I say enjoyable rather than good, so far, but with a few more spins, who knows).

I guess being partial to the sound of Young and Crazy Horse means a mantra of "I got mashed potato/Ain't got no t-bone" against a squalls of guitar does have a "certain charm" ... will explore further.

 

FWIW, IMHO, YMMV, etc, this is how I would rank Neil's 80s album (with Ragged Glory included from 1990 just to round it up to ten):

1. Ragged Glory (1990)
2. Freedom (1989)
3. Trans (1982)
4. This Note's for You (1988)
5. Old Ways (1985)
6. Re·ac·tor (1981)
7. Hawks & Doves (1980)
8. Landing on Water (1986)
9. Life (1987)
10. Everybody's Rockin' (1983)

The first three I really like, the next two are good, Re·ac·tor and Hawks & Doves each have maybe three decent tracks, and the last three are varying degrees of awful.

 

This is helpful thx - and encouraging too -- given I think Hawks & Doves is superb (like American Stars & Bars, it seemed unloved and underrated), so whilst I've worn out Ragged Glory and Freedom a while back, sounds like #3 -#6 wll be worth exploring at the least ...

 

I have a stack of Neil albums, but not enough to really say....
I really enjoy most of the seventies albums ... I like a couple of eighties albums.... Ragged Glory is excellent... Weld is excellent .... I havent bought anything since then really.

 

And then he re-releases how many plus a video and live album? Still A Letter Home is worse.

 

Lots to explore post-Weld ... not the topic of this thread, but for me his two standouts post Weld would be Chrome Dreams II and probably Harvest Moon {latter, if you want to channel the After the Gold Rush / Harvest sensitive Neil}, whilst Le Noise is a very successful experiment with Daniel Lanois, and maybe the most critically acclaimed post-Ragged Glory.

I have extremely soft spots for Silver & Gold, Broken Arrow & Peace Trail too ...

 

Every album with lyrical nonsense like:
Don't want my mp3
I'm driftin' back
When you hear my song now
You only get five percent
You used to get it all

In Germany we have the term "zum fremdschämen" for something like this

 

Hey now now, I don't think Neil has anything to be "ashamed of" with Driftin' Back, if that is what your translation means. A decent song from a worthwhile latter day album, with lyrics much broader than your excerpt.

If you said, "this song could be 10 minutes instead of 27 minutes", I would agree - however, Neil does what he is inspired to, and there will be more people than one soul in Germany who might not like it. Who knows if you are trolling, so all I can say is "Walk on", Herr.

 

Pre-1990 it was Everybody's Rockin, IMO.

Post-2000 (there was nothing even a little bit weak about his '90s output, IMO, so I'm skipping over it) I guess I'd go with Storytone.

 

That's extremely close to how I would rank them.

 

If you haven't heard Trans, you owe that to yourself. It's way better than his other '80s albums (until Freedom, anyway).

 

Neil's records haven't been the same since David Briggs passing.

 

He did plenty of off the wall ones beforehand, though. You can argue whether there have been any true peaks since the loss of Briggs, but I think there have.