Receiving bad reviews in the press, Stocki listens to the new Neil Young album and finds a lot he likes...he's not sure he said it as well as he'd have liked but he said it...
I cannot remember being more excited about the release of a Neil Young album and I have been buying them as they have been released since Comes a Time in 1978. The reasons are many. Firstly I spent last summer immersed in Johnny Rogan's tome of a biography Zero To Sixty and it gave me a chance to gaze across the horizon of the Canadian's career and remind me how important a songwriter he is. Then September 11th seemed to give Young a new relevance as he sang "Imagine" at the Telethon Tribute and wrote "Let's Roll" as a tribute to the passengers of Flight 93 who tried to overcome their hijackers. Add to that a few bootleg CDs passed my way from a friend who trades in such naughtiness and I was yearning to see how Young would follow up Silver and Gold, my kind of Neil album.
But then came the reviews. Oh dear! They were vicious in their critique. Two stars in Q was fearful. Hot Press gave 6 out of 12 to keep the spirits low but Mojo's conclusion of insipid and uninspiring was a real blow considering that they are usually champions of all things Young (he has graced their cover 3 times!). The only hope came from the dubious source of Classic Rock who claimed it as "audacious" and "an instant classic". Duh!!
Any artist will struggle to stay fresh and as critically acclaimed on their thirty eighth album. Neil Young even more so. A look across his near forty year career will leave you tasting rock, blues, country rock, just plain country, acoustic folk, rockabilly, sonic computer age experimentation, grunge, to name but a few! When you have collaborated with Waylon Jennings and Pearl Jam there is breadth to your repertoire. It also plays havoc with your reviews. Basically your review of this album will depend on what the other four CDs are in your five CD changer of Neil Young's work. If you prefer Weld/Arc, Ragged Glory, Sleeps With Angels, and Mirror Ball then you will probably dismiss it after you've enjoyed the obligatory nine minute Crazy Horse guitar work out Goin' Home. If however, you are like myself and prefer the gentler Young and are placing it alongside After the Gold Rush, American Stars and Bars, Comes a Time, and Silver and Gold then you'll probably love this.
It is Young playing Stax soul in the same way he took on rockabilly on "Everybody's Rockin'" and blues on "This Note's For You." It allows Stax' legendary Memphis soul label's rhythm section: organist Booker T. Jones and bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn of Booker T. and the MG's, to do what they do naturally and Young fits in to their groove to create a most laid back piece of soul soothing. It might be said that the openers "You're My Girl" and "Mr. Disappointment" are not the most creative of Young's career, but hey let us never forget the nadir years of the 80's when these songs would have been greatest hits!!!!! From "Differently" on this is a most satisfying album, probably as accessible as anything he has done since at least Harvest Moon and gorgeously pleasant on the ear.
Indeed that third track Differently is the key to the entire work. A lot has been made of the September 11th events on the album's theme. With "Let's Roll" having been out there on the radio for some time it would be easy to see it as the centerpiece. Certainly the words, "You gotta turn on evil/When it's coming after you" are crucial to the plot and there are missiles and guns and evil all around the singer but for me it is love in the midst of the gunfire that Young is concentrating on. Of course this has been a running topic of Young's work in recent years but here we get him almost redefining love, maybe in the light of September 11th and maybe just in the light of age and the longevity of his marriage.
On "Differently" he sings, "When I'm away I call you up/And you don't seem to miss me as much/But I know our love is still there in your heart/Just differently." It is a long time since this man was "Looking for a lover/I haven't met her yet/She'll be nothing like I picture her to be." Here he is today knowing exactly how to picture her but needing to take stock all over again of what the love is that he needs and he gives. Like the disciplined guitar playing his love has matured and has become more focused but no less passionate. Elsewhere his lover is a healer ("She's a Healer") and a rock in the world falling down outside ("When I'm In Your Arms"). He's looking at loving better and letting his lover know how much she is needed maybe in the light of the fall of the Twin Towers.
Surely it is those Twin Towers and the aftermath of that pivotal day that inspires the hymn like prayer "Two Old Friends." Here Neil seems to have been listening to U2's "When I Look At the World" where they want a Divine perspective on the horror going on around them. Young puts it thus, "Oh Lord, there's so much hate/In a world where we're from another place/Show me how to live like you/See no evil, fear no evil/Feel no evil in my heart." It is a direct prayer line that Young has not often connected to in his 40-year-old career to date.
Subjectively speaking I simply love Are You Passionate? (you maybe figured!). From ten years hindsight it might not stand in the top 5 of Young's most influential albums but it will be a most joyous listen. Maybe the reviewers need to take a line out of Neil's book and look a little differently too. If passionate means wild wanton lustful abandon then I can understand your disappointment. If on the other hand it means intimate romantic long-term sacrificial love then this is the album for those who have left infatuations behind to get on with the hard work of partnership in the third millennium. It sits alongside Dylan's Time Out of Mind at the zenith of grey haired old wave. If you don't get it, then catch up, grow up and wise up!!!!!
Other coverage for this album
The Phantom Tollbooth 2002Reviewed by Dr. Bruce L. ThiessenI can't imagine Neil Young being any less passionate than the day he received his first instrument, a plastic ukulele given to him by his parents as an early Christmas present back in 1958. I was trying to figure out what the line, "I stopped to slap plastic at an Esso station" referred to in "She's a Healer," the lenitive nine minute song at the tail end of Are You Passionate? Perhaps he ran out…
