Motherfuckers Act Like I Forgot to Mention Stuff in the Last Post

Knew I forgot something: Toy Story 3 was another remarkable movie I saw this summer, and I had a few quick thoughts on it.

When I first heard it announced that they were making another Toy Story movie, more than a decade after the last one was released, I didn't get it. I don't think I've seen the original films since their initial releases, but I recall them fondly. The first was a fun family film with a great premise, the second fleshed out the original's themes into something more poignant and special. In fact, Toy Story 2 so perfectly did what it did that it seemed like it should be the end. Why tarnish something wonderful by returning to it unnecessarily? I can't imagine the inspiration for part 3 being anything more noble than crassly trying to cash-in on the goodwill of the earlier films by bringing back the franchise. But as it turns out, they happened to make an excellent film during the crass cash-in.

I think I've mentioned this before when talking about Ratatouille, Up, Beowulf, and Kung Fu Panda, but animation is a great medium for action sequences, and like those other kids films, Toy Story 3 is something of a concealed action film. In a world smothered in frenetic, shaky cam, rapidly cut, spatially incoherent action sequences, animation offers us a fresh breath of deep focus, precisely pieced-together action that allows momentum to build through motion and logic, rather than ADHD editing room theatrics. Not to mention the way animation frees the creators to craft some truly unique set pieces, as well as gives them access to an untethered, weightless "camera" that can get shots that would be impossible in the real world.

Part of the great fun of this film is that the last act, detailing the toys' escape from a day care center, is essentially a prison break movie that climaxes in an extended chase scene, a la The Great Escape. It's a veritable masterpiece of technical craftsmanship, punctuated by all sorts of delightfully clever ideas (Mr. Potato Head creating a new, unstable body by putting his appendages into a tortilla, which is attacked by hungry pigeons; a cymbal-banging monkey as a security guard; little plastic toy bins used as jail cells; so on) that put a goofy spin on the genre. It's the most intense action sequence I've seen in a good many years (in fact, potentially too intense and emotionally upsetting for small children... the toys come A LOT closer to mortal peril than you might expect) and it's in a freakin' kids movie.

I'm not going to lie and pretend I didn't have a strong emotional reaction to the film as well, but I did wonder if perhaps it, thematically speaking, hewed a little too close to the second film. As I remember it, that film was all about the toys coming to terms with the fact that their owner, Andy, was going to grow up one day and leave them behind. That was why so many adults connected with the film: it was a sneaky metaphor for parenthood. The climax of Toy Story 3 pushes all those same buttons, having Andy heading off to college, and it brushes a little too close to redundancy for my liking. What saves it is that they find a new angle in the material; this time, it focuses on Andy as well, illustrating his conflicted emotions about heading off to school and leaving his family/toy/childhood behind.

And fuck it, you know what? I want to talk about Step Up 3D a little bit while I have you here. I'm not shocking anyone when I say it's a silly, stupid movie filled with stock characters and dusty, shop worn cliches by the dozen. But it does a few things, and does them very well, that I greatly cherished. Film can be an artform of great narrative, thematic and emotional depth, but it doesn't always have to be. It can also be an artform that records performance, and celebrates motion and light in a unique and indelible way. Step Up 3D is an infectiously goofy, breathless dance flick that presents a neon colored world of nonstop kinetic energy; it also exploits the gimmick of 3D better than any other live action movie in recent memory. Bubbles, balloons and the dancers themselves are thrust out of the screen towards the audience; the dancers dance on a flooded stage, on a stage covered in white powder, and for their big finale, put on silly looking futuristic shirts with colored lights on them that add a synchronized light show to their dance routine. I kinda loved it.

I suppose the movie is indefensible on the level of dialogue and character, except to say that it has a charming dopiness about it; my frequent laughter was affectionate and not derisive. It presents such a gloriously fantastical world, one where uniformed dance gangs challenge each other to impromptu dance battles in public places, that you couldn't have wiped the dumb smile off my face with a squeegee.

Let me put it like this: I like old musicals and dance movies. While Step Up 3D clearly doesn't have a screenplay as strong or witty as, say, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes or Singin' in the Rain, it provides the same kind catching, winning fun. The high point of the film, for me, was a Fred-and-Ginger-inspired dance number between two of the leads on the streets of New York, dancing up doorsteps, putting trashcan lids on their feet for some softshoe, shaking tree leaves on themselves for a kinda snowy effect, etc., all done in one shot. It comes dangerously close to being magical, which is more than most mainstream entertainment aspires to.

Motherfuckers Act Like They Forgot About Dan

Hey all you out there in internetland. Just a quick update since I haven't posted here in a few weeks.

First thing's first: my girlfriend got a Twitter account and didn't want to try it alone, so I fucking caved and got one myself. You can read my 140-character-or-less thoughts @ASeriousDan. I haven't really found much use for it, except I'm posting a tweet (that's what they call it, right? "Posting a tweet"?) every time I watch a movie, with a mini-review and rating. I know, I know, what a perfect way to insightfully analyze film. Everyone else might as well just give up, I think I've reached the pinnacle of film criticism.

I did originally create this blog to talk about movies, so here are a few fast thoughts about some of the more remarkable recent films I've seen.

Debra Granik's Winter's Bone, about a teenage girl from the Ozarks searching for her missing meth dealer father before the state seizes their home, could have been a piece of miserablist poverty porn a la Precious Based On the Novel Push By Saffire. Instead, Granik crafted it into a skillful thriller and richly detailed slice of life. When the film first started, its desaturated color palette and handheld camera work had me worried it was going to be some sort of self-consciously gritty, self-important bit of Indie faux-realism, but for once this overused style works. As much as it is a film about a girl traveling to the depths of the meth underworld in a desperate bid to save her family, it's also a film about a specific time and place that creates a densely textured world without beating you over the head with it. A masterpiece of set design, it keeps finding all the right details, from the lizard cage in a drug dealer's trailer, to a little girl hopping around on her toy horse on the old trampoline stashed in her backyard. The film also signals Jennifer Lawrence, the lead, as an actress to keep tabs on. And more impressively it casts a whole new light on John Hawkes; known for playing twerps, here he gives a surprising turn as "Teardrop," an intimidating drug dealer who slowly reveals (just the slightest, mind you) amount of humanity when shit hits the fan.

Completely confounding to me was Alain Resnais's Wild Grass, but I mean that in a good way. It starts off something like a Jeunet film, a quirky fable about about a lonely dentist and a strange old man whose paths cross by chance, introducing all sorts of different plot strands that seem about to come together. Instead, the film pulls back layer after layer to reveal a bizarre creepiness under the light romantic comedy surface, and when the story finally "comes together," it is in a way that makes no sense and doesn't seem to answer anything. It's like the anti-Amelie. Like Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad, it almost seems like a self-conscious admission/analysis of its own impenetrability (albeit more playful and funny than that film) and an invitation to revel in its glorious artificiality, in this case a world of rich candy colors, flights of fancy and imagination, and energetic, show-offy camera work.

And of course I have to mention Inception. There's a lot you can (rightly) criticize about the film: it's depiction of dreams and the mind are almost perversely literal; Christopher Nolan still can't film a good shoot-out; with a few brief exceptions, the film wastes ample opportunities to deliver mindblowing visuals and/or surrealism. Yeah, I think Nolan is far too logical and not visually oriented enough to really make a movie about dreams. Instead, what he did was use his strengths in editing and story-craft to make a great heist/con movie style thriller. The "dream" motif is little more than a gimmick that allows Nolan to create some truly awesome set pieces, freeing him to play with time, space, gravity, parallel action, and so on. The last half of the movie is like one long suspense sequence (or more accurately, dozens of suspense sequences piled on top of each other and happening simultaneously) that doesn't let up for a second, even leaving us hanging when the film cuts to credits. It's not the best film I've seen so far this year (That would probably be either Winter's Bone or Bong Joon-Ho's Mother), but it is the most fun... but I'll have to see it again to determine if the film's nearly wall-to-wall exposition drags it down when you already know what's going on.

Journey Through the Past, Mission Accomplished...

... Sort of.

With the posting of my Fork in the Road, I have officially reached the end of my massive, 55-ish Neil Young album collection and thus the end of this project. Except that during these last three months, I incidentally ended up picking up a few Neil albums that I didn't cover (the third Buffalo Springfield album, Vol. 1 of the Neil Young Archives, Decade, some other random things) that I should probably address. I'm a little burned out, so I won't be getting to them right away, but I hope to pepper them in over the next month or so.

And if I'm feeling up to it I may, as an addendum to this whole project, post about a few tangentially connected items... including a non-Neil Crazy Horse album, a Stephen Stills solo album and a few other ideas I have. The idea would be to review them on their own merits, but also evaluate/compare them from a Neil-centric perspective as well.

I'd also like to get back to writing about movies on this blog (my original intention with it), so I'll try to carve out some time for that soon.

Fork in the Road

See, Living With War, this is how you do a political album. Fork in the Road is charmingly offbeat in its subject matter, inspired by Lincvolt, Neil Young's Lincoln Continental which he had modified to run on alternative energy. He uses this as a jumping off point mainly to talk about environmental issues, although he does touch on a few other topics. What helps Fork succeed where War sometimes faltered is both the general tone of the lyrics (more playful, hopeful, and thoughtful), and notably stronger songwriting. Oh, and it rocks harder.

I've always questioned the usefulness of rigidly specific political art. Does its subject matter date the material and make it irrelevant a few years down the line? Does the artist perhaps have a further obligation to make the work connect on other levels beyond its literal subject matter? One thing I admire about this album is its acknowledgment of these issues. On "Just Singing a Song," Neil says "You can sing about change/While you're making your own/You can be what you try to say/While the big wheel rolls/Just singing a song won't change the world."

Neil doesn't opt for any Crazy Horse-ian long-winded jams, but the album is heavy on groovy riffs. He brags about his electric car and celebrates life on the open road in the two opening tracks, "When World's Collide" and "Fuel Line," both bluesy hard rock tunes. That's essentially the predominant tone for most of the album, but he strays in a few places. The second to last song, "Light a Candle," is an acoustic ballad; the tone it strikes is a little melancholy, but the lyrics are consistent with Fork's forwarding looking, optimistic message ("Instead of cursin' the darkness/Light a candle for where we're goin'/There's somethin' ahead worth lookin' for").

My favorite song is probably "Cough Up the Bucks," presumably about the financial crisis. It's a little darker and more bitter than the other songs, but also a little more humorous, and the lyrics mainly consist of Neil repeating the title over and over anyway. What makes the song awesome is the music. My words will be deficient in trying to explain the quirkiness of the main riff, but I'll give it a shot: its a catchy hard rock riff seemingly made up of guitar harmonics, distortion and (I'm making up this term because I don't know how to describe it) "muffing" the strings with his hand, and not exactly playing any identifiable chords or notes. And it sounds sweet.

The only really low point on Fork in the Road is "Johnny Magic ," a tribute to the mechanic who put together Lincvolt. It's a little too peppy and corny for my tastes, and features some obnoxious backup singers piping in with "Johnny Magic! Johnny Magic!" incessantly in the background. Plus, every time I read the song's title, it makes me think of the crappy Tears For Fears song "Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams," and then I have two stupid songs stuck in my head.

Will Fork end up like Living With War in a few years and feel irrelevant? I don't know. Right now, a little over a year after its release, with the whole horrible BP spill bullshit going on, it feels even more relevant than before. We'll see if it holds up. The album and title song's central metaphor says it all; we're at a crossroads and now's the time to make the right choices. And if we make those choices, this album could be a quaint antique in a few years. In which case, maybe irrelevancy would be a good thing.

Rating: B +

Chrome Dreams II

You might be wondering right now, "What happened to Chrome Dreams I?" In a not atypical bout of perverseness on Neil's part, Chrome Dreams II is the sequel to an album he recorded in the 70's... and never released.

You can chalk this one up as yet another in a long, varied, seemingly endless line of Neil Young albums that I didn't recognize as being pretty good until now. It's the kind of album Neil doesn't actually release too often, especially in the later years of his career. Usually, he picks a style/genre for an album and sticks with it, but Chrome Dreams II is fairly diverse, probably the most so since Freedom's release nearly 20 years earlier. It gives you mellow acoustic ballads ("Beautiful Bluebird"), Everybody Knows This is Nowhere-esque classic rock jams ("Spirit Road"), Crazy Horse-style garage rock ("Dirty Old Man"), Are You Passionate?-like soul, and even an oddball piano diddley with a choir of children singing backup ("The Way").

In fact, the album's best song, "Ordinary People," an epic 18-minute rocker (possibly his longest studio track ever) with a backup horn section, was originally written This Note's For You era... shocking, because of how vastly superior this song is to anything on that album. Why Neil didn't release it then, I'll never know, but it's one of his all-time best. It cycles repeatedly through, I believe, only 2 different chord progressions and one horn line, plugging in multiple guitar and sax solos. Each verse is essentially a self-contained short story, with no more of a specific common theme than "people," and lord knows how he remembers all of the lyrics, because there are lots of them. It's hard to pick a favorite verse, but for some reason I'm really fond of the part where he sings about "Downtown people/Tryin' to make their way to work/Nose to the stone people/Some are saints, and some are jerks." Not as good but still memorable is "No Hidden Path," itself 14 minutes long. Together with "Ordinary People," the two songs make up nearly half of the album.

Save "Ordinary People," there isn't much great material on the album, but what I failed to acknowledge until now is that most of it is solid, good. There's not really a weak link on the album, even if there's only one classic track. I very much enjoyed listening through it a few times for this project, and have no idea why I was so dismissive of it back in 2007. The best I can guess is that Neil has many great albums, that it's hard to recognize the positive qualities of an album that's simply "good."

Rating: B

Déjà Vu Live (as a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

Seeing as this is the final CSNY album I will be blogging about for "Journey Through the Past," perhaps I should say a few words. If you've looked through this whole massive, nearly finished project, then you've noticed that CSNY albums tend to be rated lower than Neil Young's solo albums. It's not so much that I actively dislike Crosby, Stills or Nash (well, maybe Crosby a little, but all three have made music I enjoy). It's more that I don't like them nearly as much as Neil, and I feel like he doesn't really collaborate well with them. There are some excellent Neil Young songs on the CSNY albums, but they tend to make up some of his most mainstream, least interesting, least experimental material. When he teams up with these guys, it seems to be more for the combined star power than for any sense that they push him into new creative territory.

On the other hand, I think CSN are wonderful performers, especially their vocals, and they make a great back-up band for Neil. During the 3 months I've been working on this, I bit the bullet and purchased Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 (which I may eventually do a retroactive post about, or at least about the Live at the Riverboat album included in it). One of the greatest pleasures on it, no lie, are the live versions of CSNY playing Neil's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" and "Tell Me Why." CSNs lovely harmonies layer perfectly under Neil's music.

So I feel a little ambivalent about Déjà Vu Live, which should more accurately be called Living With War Live, plus a few random Crosby, Stills & Nash songs. The performances are most definitely superior to the original studio versions, but I'm still not crazy about all the songs. The performances of good songs like "Living With War" and "After the Garden" are possibly their best versions, but two of that album's better songs ("The Restless Consumer" and "Flags of Freedom") are missing, while all the crappy ones are present and accounted for. The CSN songs on the album are solid enough (good performances of Nash's "Military Madness," Stills' "For What It's Worth," and Crosby's "What Are Their Names?"), but nothing essential, as the songs were selected more for their political content than their classic-ness.

With a better track listing, this could have shaped up as one of CSNY's best. As it stands, its an album of excellent performances of inconsistent material.

Rating: C +

Living With War - In the Beginning

What a difference production can make. Essentially the live studio tracks from Living With War, minus the 100-strong choir, the stripped down sound of In the Beginning significantly changes the tone of the album. The lack of the choir; the grungy, less polished sound; and especially Neil's frail, Tonight's the Night-esque straining-for-the-notes vocals... it makes the album sound personal, intimate, and like its coming from a place of passion moreso than self-righteousness.

The material is still inconsistent, the lyrics still make it too much of a relic. "Let's Impeach the President" will always be an obnoxiously smug song, no matter how its played. But the good songs (especially "After the Garden," "Living With War," and "Flags of Freedom") are even better now, and this is by far the preferable of the two albums.

Rating: C +

Living With War

So back in 2006, Neil Young made a protest album about how much he didn't like George W. Bush. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but Living With War falls victim to the pitfalls common to political music. The most obvious of which is how, only 4 years later, the album is dated to the point of irrelevance. We're living in Barack Obama's America now, so the specificity of some of these songs is distracting; they serve no function outside of their original context. I suppose there's value as historical documentation, but it's difficult to get worked up over the criticisms that don't apply any more.

The other major flaw with the album is the tone of smugness and self-righteousness that infects some of the songs, which is not an attractive quality in music. This primarily manifests itself in the lyrics. Personally, I think political music works best when it comes from a place of passion, or dark humor, or hope. But gloating condescension and moral superiority just make the artist sound a little assholish.

My least favorite song is "Let's Impeach the President," where Neil offers the bon mot "Thank god he's cracking down on steroids/Since he sold his old baseball team." To be honest, though, what really rubs me wrong about the song is Neil's use of "let's" and "we" and "our" and other inclusive terms when, despite the fact that he's lived here for many years, he's not a US citizen. I don't mind a Canadian insulting our president, but I don't think he should be including himself in the "let's." He scoffs about "the days of Mission Accomplished" on "Shock and Aww." He insists that "The people have spoken/You might not like what they said/But they weren't joking" on "The Restless Consumer." And on "Looking For a Leader" I feel that he starts to pander, saying the next president could be "a woman, or a black man after all," a line that only exists to get applause. (Not to mention, why no shout-out to Jews, Asians, Hispanics, Muslims and the countless other minorities who have never held America's highest office?)

Problems extend to the music itself. The album was cranked out pretty quickly, and there's a Greendale-like sense of the music being subordinate to the lyrics. The overall sound of the album is Crazy Horse-esque midtempo rock, with the welcome occasional addition of a trumpet. Okay, but then Neil decided to go ahead and record a 100-person choir singing backup for all of the songs. Even ignoring the fact that it adds to the album's sometimes self-righteous tone (as it's, I can only assume, supposed to be the voice of America joining Neil in speakin' out), it just sounds like shit. It doesn't match the album's grungy, low-fi sound, and is awkwardly layered in under all the fuzz. It has the grating quality of one of those Kidz Bop albums they always used to show commercials for on TV; tuneless, homogenized and obnoxious.

The album does shine on a few occasions, usually when Neil gets less specific and tries to process things poetically and personally (as I've mentioned many times before, I tend to think he should stick to writing inward). The album's opener, "After the Garden," is a catchy and effective cautionary tale about the post-apocalyptic world we may be living in if we don't take better care of the planet. On "Flags of Freedom," Neil sings "Have you seen the flags of freedom?/What color are they now?/Do you think that you believe in yours/More than they do theirs somehow?", a powerful sentiment that seems both more timeless and generalized, and a little more thoughtful and nuanced than many of the other lyrics on the album. The best song, by far, is the title track, a beautiful and moving song about the emotional toll of war that is so eloquent in its antiwar message that it, frankly, makes the rest of the album seem pointless.

Rating: C

Prairie Wind

I have been loathe to provide too much context for my writeups for "Journey Through the Past," trying to evaluate the albums in a vacuum (to the extent that it's possible) and appreciate them for their own, self-contained merits. But its hard not to acknowledge that Neil had had surgery for an aneurysm around the time he recorded Prairie Wind. This fact adds a strong poignancy to what is the defining album of his reflective, nostalgic Old Man period.

Neil had been exploring the themes of childhood, memory, family and old age in several of his previous album, but his new found sense of mortality allowed him to approach them in a deeper, more touching, perhaps more philosophical manner than before. Both "Far From Home" and the title song touch on his youth in Canada, as he requests that we "bury him out on the prairie" when he's gone. Are You Passionate? had two songs about his daughter leaving home, but this album has his best: Here For You, all the more touching for its indications of Neil learning to let go ("Yes, I miss you/But I never want to hold you down"). A darker expression of letting go can be found on "Falling Off the Face of the Earth," and I think its title sums up its tone pretty well. It's hard to pick a favorite song on an album this excellent, but I might go for "It's a Dream," a beautiful and haunting ballad about the elusive nature of the past ("It's only a dream/Just a memory without anywhere to stay").

That Prairie Wind is an unabashed folkie throwback to albums like Harvest, Comes a Time and Harvest Moon is appropriate to its atmosphere of reminiscence; Neil is reflecting on his past, and on his relevance in the modern world. It shares aesthetic and thematic similarities to Silver & Gold (which can almost be seen as something of a test run for this album), but Prairie Wind's naked, honest sentimentality and stronger, sturdier songwriting place it far above. Both albums deliberately recall to his classic, popular folk rock style, but Prairie Wind can stand tall with his classics as a great album.

The only real detraction from the album is "He Was the King," a silly, stupid tribute to Elvis that stands out as a lighthearted track on an album of deeply moving material. I don't mind him throwing a little levity into the mix, but the song is inconsequential to the degree that I forgot it existed before I heard it again. Also, it doesn't help my opinion of it that it clocks in at an obscenely bloated 6 minutes. Or that, as Chuck D memorably put it, Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me.

Prairie Wind ends with "When God Made Me," perhaps the most plainly philosophical song in Neil Young's long, varied catalog. Its an attempt to tackle nothing less than the meaning of life, by pondering what his creator might have had in mind when he made him ("Was he thinking about my country/Or the color of my skin?/Was he thinking about my religion/And the way I worshiped him?"). Typically, this deep into a musician's career, i'ts not surprising if it seems like their glory days are far behind him. But here Neil is, at 60, putting out one of his personal bests.

Rating: A

Greendale (with Crazy Horse)

Greendale requires from me a bit of a personal, philosophical statement of my tastes before I can make any real criticisms. For me, the "music" on an album (that is to say, things like the melody, structure, "sound" or atmosphere, chord progression, and so on) will always be more important than the lyrics. That's not to say I don't appreciate good lyrics; preferably, a song should have both good music and lyrics. But if I'm honest, at the end of the day, I can forgive a pop song for having mediocre lyrics if its music moves me, and likewise a song with greatest lyrics in the world won't mean much to me if its flat and tuneless.

I have a certain degree of respect for what Neil did with Greendale. It's the closest he's come to doing a full-on concept album; it's lyrics tell a complicated story involving the citizens of the fictional town of Greendale, in particular the Green family and what happens to them when their junkie family member Jed kills a cop. The album is ambitious and multifaceted, with Neil often switching perspectives between a wide array of characters, even trying to adopt their voices in the lyrics. The story touches on broad themes important to Neil (environmentalism, media sensationalism, corporate corruption, and American life post-9/11, to name a few) while trying to maintain a solid, emotional core that's empathetic to its characters. I've never considered Neil much of a storyteller, and while this album has plenty of problems in that department, this is likely his best attempt at it.

Thing is, there is barely a song on here that I can simply enjoy as music. The music is at the behest of the lyrics, and Neil often settles for monotonous electric-blues riffs, endlessly repeated to give him ample time to tell his story via literal, sometimes rather unlyrical lyrics. The median song length is approx. 7 1/2 minutes, yet few of the songs build, change or climax in any meaningful way, their extended lengths determined solely by the words and not by any sonic concerns. There are few memorable melodies or riffs to be found; unlike a good musical, you won't find yourself humming any of the tunes after listening to Greendale. I find this at least mildly ironic, as Neil released a film of the same title, unseen by me, that was essentially a rock opera with the album as the soundtrack (I guess with a cast lipsynching to Neil's vocals).

Returning to Greendale nearly 7 years after dismissing it, I do appreciate it, even if I don't enjoy it, more than I did back in 2003. The lyrics, although sometimes awkward and not always successful at effectively or convincingly getting into the minds of the characters, do weave a complicated tapestry of themes, plot and ideas into a story that is slightly more interesting than I initially gave it credit for. I'd even go as far to say that it is occasionally a little poignant. And its not quite the musical dead zone I once considered it (although there's still not enough going on): "Bandit," the album's only acoustic track could work on its own terms as a song, and "Double E" actually builds to a rousing conclusion, as does the album's closer "Be the Rain."

Yet those are moments I was only able to pick out after repeat listenings. What I keep coming back to is the music, and it doesn't do much to move me. The things I have learned to appreciate about Greendale are primarily intellectual and not emotional, which is not enough for me. Unlike nearly every other album I've listened to for "Journey Through the Past," I felt actively hesitant every time I was about to put this one on; I wouldn't go so far as to call that feeling dread, just the recognition that I was never in the mood to listen to it, and probably never would be.

Rating: C -

Are You Passionate?

The closest comparison to Are You Passionate? in Neil Young's discography is This Note's For You, an album I don't particularly care for. Recorded with Booker T. & the M.G.'s as his backup band (except for one song, "Goin' Home," done with Crazy Horse), Passionate is as foolhardy a mixture of styles (in this case, soul and R&B mixed with Neil's signature rock 'n roll sound) as Note, and yet there is a charm in tone and strength of songwriting on this album that makes the experiment work.

Neil has at this point fully embraced his status as a senior citizen, writing wistful songs about family, love, and regrets... but done with more warmth and energy than on Silver & Gold. He has not one, but two songs that touch on his daughter growing up and moving out: opening track "You're My Girl," a bright and corny song about saying goodbye, and the heavier, less specfically focused, and more poignant "Differently," where Neil attempts to put a positive but bittersweet spin on the changes in his life ("When I'm away I call you up/And you don't seem to miss me that much/But I know our love is still there in your heart/Just differently"). The passage of time is an important theme in general on the album, like when he talks about "New buildings going up/Old buildings coming down" on "When I Hold You In My Arms." Another excellent track is "Mr. Disappointment," a serio-comic song where Neil personifies and confronts his regrets, apparently singing in different voices for himself and the titular character (on the chorus he answers "I'd like to shake your hand, Disappointment" with "Hey, how ya doin'?" on the backing vocals).

One of the nicest things about Are You Passionate? is that it's one of the more focused and crafted of his rock albums he had recorded in a good long while. The Crazy Horse albums of the 90's could feel unstructured and self-indulgent, stretching songs out to interminable length and featuring aimless, repetitive guitar solos. The songs on Passionate aren't short, per se, but find a nice groove, stick mainly to a solid sound (warm soul with a rock edge, heavy on backing vocals), and have strong, clear melodies with memorable lyrics. Even Neil's guitar playing is markedly different; frequently melodic and performed-as-written (as opposed to improvised), rarely used for the noodling and exploration that is typical of his style.

At the time, I believe the album was best known for it's one hard rock-ish cut, "Let's Roll," an earnest 9/11 tribute about the passengers on flight 93. I have decidedly mixed feelings about it. The main riff is catchy but repetitive. I respect that the song mainly shies away from rah-rah jingoist bullshit, and admit that it has a certain emotional impact... but I wonder if, not unlike Paul Greengrass's film United 93, the emotional impact is truly earned and not simply a by-product of my strong feelings about the actual event.

The worst parts of the album are when Neil's style clashes a little too much with the material. The biggest and most obvious complaint is song length. The songwriting itself seems more clean and straightforward than anything Neil had done in a while, so I'm not sure why he lets so many tracks float past the 5 or 6-minute mark, when 3 or 4 minutes probably would have sufficed. Especially in some cases when the song cycles back to the same guitar melody 2 or 3 times and repeats a chorus ad naseum; it can put a (slight) damper on otherwise excellent music. The exception is the closing track, "She's a Healer," a 9-minute jam that's the grooviest thing on the album, and which I significantly under-rated when the album originally came out 8 years ago.

My complaints are minor, really. If we do the math, of Are You Passionate?'s 11 tracks, 4 or 5 are excellent, another 3 or so are pretty good, and the rest, if mediocre, are passable. It's soul elements make it stand out (in a good way) from the rest of his discography while still sounding inescapably Neil, and it has some of his finest crafted tunes and most disciplined performances in a non-folk album since Freedom.

Rating: B +

Road Rock Vol. 1: Friends & Relatives

The first sign that this isn't a superlative Neil Young live album on par with Live Rust or Weld is that Neil has never released a Vol. 2. Part of the problem is that, similar to Year of the Horse, there's a little too much fat (the 18-minute version of "Cowgirl in the Sand" doesn't really justify its length). But the real problem is that it lacks too many of the things that make the best Neil live albums so good.

Yes, there are a few pleasantly unexpected song choices ("Walk On" and "Peace of Mind"), an enjoyable previously unreleased song ("Fool For Your Love," which sounds vaguely Everybody's Rockin'-esque), and an absolutely great performance of "Tonight's the Night" (but, come on, this has to be like the 4th great live version of that song he's released).The performances collected here are more good than bad. What Neil doesn't do is deliver any reworked versions of classic songs, or pluck any overlooked or mediocre songs from his discography and imbue them with a new energy that makes you reconsider your original feelings about them. Worse, the version of "Motorcycle Mama" here makes me think I've probably overrated it previously, despite not being that crazy about it in the first place.

I still maybe have a moderately favorable opinion of most of Road Rock, but its biggest disappointment is its main event, an 8-minute version of "All Along the Watchtower" (done in the style of Jimi Hendrix's famous cover version, and not the Bob Dylan original) with The Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde on guest vocals. On paper, that sounds like something I should absolutely love, but its sadly underwhelming. This past weekend, I listened to Hendrix's Are You Experienced? for the first time in years, and its obvious that his guitar style was hugely influential on Neil. Problem is, Neil is not a notably gifted guitarist on a technical level, while Hendrix had more chops than a kung fu fight in a butcher shop. I'm sure it was meant in tribute, but by playing a song so closely associated with a genius like Hendrix, it works to highlight Neil's weaknesses.

Rating: C +

Silver & Gold

On the opening song of Silver & Gold, Young sings "good to see you again," and that may be something of a self-conscious nod on Neil's part to the album's deliberate return to his old folkie sound. After a decade where Neil frequently took his music to hard rock extremes, this is one of the most mellow records he's ever released. As with Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Rust Never Sleeps, and Freedom, there often seems to be a sense of change or course-correction to the albums that Neil releases when entering a new decade. Silver & Gold is about Neil finally becoming an old man, and looking back on his life and music.

At its strongest, Silver & Gold is a beautiful and evocative as similarly laid back classics like Comes a Time or Harvest Moon. At its weakest, the album is too lethargic and, perhaps worse, naval-gazing. Neil's always been best at talking about himself (as opposed to, say, being more of a storyteller), but sometimes when he gets too specific he makes his music seem too self-serving. "Daddy Went Walkin'" rubs me the wrong way every time I hear it, not the least because, like George Carlin before me, it bothers me to hear a grown man refer to his father as "daddy." The song is simply Neil reminiscing about his dad without much of a point, and not to be a dick, but "I sure did love my pa!" is not a very compelling subject for a song. (There's also an unintended bit of comedy in its musical and tonal similarities to "Old King," a song from Harvest Moon about a dog Neil used to have.) Musically, I like the song "Buffalo Springfield Again," but the subject is a bit, um, literal, don't you think? And while nostalgia sells, I'm not sure its that interesting to hear a musician reminiscing about being rich and famous. (Also, since Buffalo Springfield's second album was already called Buffalo Springfield Again, I submit that the proper title for the song should be "Buffalo Springfield Again, Again.")

But I bitch too much, there's still a lot to like about this album. My favorite song is "The Great Divide," a delicate and slightly haunting song that touches the themes of change and regret in more abstract, poetic terms, a style Neil is better at. The other classic on here is "Red Sun," a song that sounds to me like Neil was attempting to write an Irish folk song. The entire album is similarly quiet and peaceful, but the best tracks tap into a fragile beauty that Neil had not much explored in the past decade.

Rating: B -. Inconsistent, but the best moments are classics that stand tall with his best work.

Looking Forward (as a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

A few reasons why I prefer Looking Forward to American Dream, the previous CSNY album. 1) It's an actual folk-rock album this time, a throwback to their old sound and not a piece of overproduced 80's adult contemporary hackwork. 2) There are only 2 David Crosby songs, and neither contain the lyric "Like a fish out of water/Waiting for the mercy of the cat." 3) It's shorter (less than 45 minutes) and sweeter, with less of a sense of self-importance and more of a nostalgic tone (exactly the kind of tone a pointless reunion album should strike). 4) There are four Neil songs, and they are all worthwhile. 5) Although, frankly, just as corny as American Dream, the nostalgia and gentleness of much of the album make Looking Forward corny in a more charming way.

It's far from perfect. It suffers from the typical CSNY problem: outside of CS&N harmonizing well, it doesn't seem like there is much of a collaboration going on. It sounds like a compilation of B-sides from each member's solo material. CS&N all have their talents, but in my esteem Y towers so far above them that I'd rather just listen to one of his albums. I think the best CSNY compilation album would be called Young, Young, Young & Young and it would just be a collection of songs the group recorded that he wrote. Hell, if that existed, I bet I'd give it an "A."

Still, this is an improvement over their last album, even if it still sorta smells like a cash grab. CS&N each contribute some of their best material ("Stand and Be Counted," "Faith in Me," and "Heartland," respectively). Though the album is called Looking Forward, it's old school in sound and in mindset. I'm not sure they intended it, but occasionally the album is a touching portrait of their growing irrelevance and disconnection from modern times. Mostly it's kind of sweet, but I would not be doing my duty if I didn't single out Stills' "Seen Enough" as embarrassing, get-off-my-lawn rantings of an old fogey. Hearing him sing about "gigabyte meth freaks" who are "removed from reality by silicone diodes" would be funny if it didn't make him sound so much like Andy Rooney.

After a decade of mostly Crazy Horse and Horse-esque projects with only a few stray ventures into folk, this album shows Neil transitioning into his next (and perhaps final?) phase: Old Man Neil. Old Man Neil likes to wax nostalgic about his past, sing about his kids, mull over his regrets, write love songs about his wife, and talk about getting old. His best song here is the title track, a sweet and funny ballad where Neil says he's "not waiting for times to change" and jokes that he's "trying not to use the word 'old'." The song is a potent mix of sadness, humor and hope, what will turn out to be the predominant themes for the next decade (and beyond?)

Rating: B -

Year of the Horse (with Crazy Horse)

"They all sound the same... it's all one song," says Neil right at the beginning of Year of the Horse, a live album/soundtrack to the (reportedly terrible) Crazy Horse documentary helmed by Jim Jarmusch. It's a fitting opening, as this album suffers from indulging in many of the group's worst tendencies: bloated, shapeless improvisations and repetitiveness. I've been repeatedly on the record as enjoying the Horse's endless jam sessions; I'm not just talking about length here. The 13-minute "Danger Bird" on this album is a worthwhile addition. But some songs are worthy of the Horse treatment, and some aren't. "Barstool Blues," "Sedan Delivery," "Slip Away" and "Big Time" exponentially depreciate with each additional minute Neil & friends insert into them. The worst is a butchering of "Prisoners of Rock 'n Roll" (here just called "Prisoners" for some reason), a goofy song from Life that I always loved that clearly should not be stretched out to 7 minutes. It devolves into a shapeless, irritating wank-fest where everyone seems to be playing whatever they please without any consideration to what the other musicians are playing. (Neil comes off as weirdly proud of this fact, proclaiming at the end that you could "smell the Horse on that one!")

What somewhat redeems Year of the Horse is its offbeat track selection; it provides live versions of some excellent, underrepresented Neil Young songs like "When Your Lonely Heart Breaks" and "Scattered," and some effectively reworked versions of some songs, like a way laid-back "Human Highway," an electric version of "Pocahontas," and (making what must be its 5 millionth appearance on a Neil album) "Mr. Soul" done as acoustic blues rock.

Rating: C. Some worthwhile cuts, but a lot of meandering crap. Stick with Weld if you want a good latter-day Crazy Horse live album.