Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Psychadelic Pill
By George Raphael, on 11 Nov 05, 2012
I’m new around here and I have a confession to make. I love classic rock. Like, really love it. I spent years unravelling the mess that was the 60s and 70s rock and roll structure. I fell in love with the guitar-playing frontman, love the solos, scoured the internet for the purest guitar fix and starting with the golden age of the guitar seemed correct to me. I’ve been able to pull myself out of that abyss; though I still fall asleep every night to Pink Floyd, and that is not an exaggeration. I get that grindy, real rock is essentially dead, so I’ve accepted the evolution of music. I love the new sounds, but when I catch something old that’s new again, I’m going to go right for it, with high hopes as well. So I understand why you would say, “this is a hip site so what the hell is a crusty old man doing on this page?!” But if you consider all of the California chill rock and Southern Rock revival bands we’ve used to get the ladies out of their clothes in the past ten years (Band of Horses, Kings of Leon, and Limbeck) practically draw the basis of their sound from bands like Neil Young and Crazy Horse, how can you not let the master back into the spotlight every once in awhile?
When the lyrics, “I’m drifin’ back” are repeated a few times within the first few minutes of the opening track “Driftin’ Back“, you better believe it. Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s newest album, Psychadelic Pill is most definitely drifting back in time. You’re immediately aware of two things: It’s definitely a familiar Neil Young and it’s definitely nostalgic. He also decided that track one would last twenty seven or so odd minutes. An interesting choice to say the least. It’s sort of like waking up, running a marathon then starting your whole day of work after that. Daunting. That being said, this is hardly a daunting album overall and these twenty seven minutes are done on a magic carpet, and was there any doubt? Because, let’s face it, if you’re going to take a magic carpet ride with the right guide, it would be Neil Young. So when Neil closes his mouth and focuses on his Gibson, it’s on. That dirty, feedback-filled tone-age, that distorted space-grunge sound is right on point. The beauty of practically creating a sound is being able to fall back on it without it really feeling hackey or fake, in fact it’s welcomed. ”Driftin’ Back” feels like Neil getting his bearings with Crazy Horse and when that is sorted out, the album can begin. The follow up is the titular “Psychadelic Pill“, in which the lead guitar has that great liftoff quality. You know that feeling you get as your oft-delayed domestic airliner finally has gone full thrust and the rubber ceases to meet the asphalt, you ascend up and up, wings tearing the air in two? It does that. Unsurprisingly, the guitar is the star throughout the album. ”Ramada Inn” and “Walk Like A Giant” showcase Neil’s legendary guitar further. Crazy Horse has always been good at being the white bread, lettuce, and tomato to Neil’s thick cut bacon. He’s the star and when he wants to go off on a wild guitar tangent, Crazy Horse knows nobody ever eats tomato and lettuce sandwiches so they just keep the beat. I can’t decide which of the long songs I like best, “Driftin’ Back” noodles the most, looking to find the grooves, “Ramada Inn” has great guitar but embarrassingly bad lyrics, and “Walk Like A Giant” has perhaps the best lyrics but trails off miserably at the end.
I’m sure a lot of people are going to get a lot of his lyrics, but I’ve never paid a great deal of attention to lyrics in music so I’m not pulling profound inspiration out of these songs. In fact, I’m certain there is more to them, with time grapes turn to raisins and stuff like that, but on the surface, right out of the gate I’m not seeing it. Maybe my good lyric detection is faulty, I don’t know, but these lyrics don’t compete with his legendary ones; but they don’t have to. I don’t think that takes away too much from the overall sound of the album which is classic Neil Young. The lyrics follow the same familiar inflection, just using different words. It reminds me of early Metallica where they wrote the music of the songs and hummed placeholders before actually adding in words. It’s sort of a backwards way to do it, and resulted in some bizarre lyrical choices. Still, that never stopped them from rocking the house, so why the hell not? There also seems to be a lot of reminiscing in Young’s lyrics. In “Twisted Road” he sources classic songs from Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead, It’s like he just woke up from a 40 year sleep, Rip Van Winkle-style, which in some aspects is probably true.
There’s a lot of unevenness in the album, song lengths vary wildly. As I mentioned above, there are long songs on here. Of the nine tracks, three are longer than 15 minutes and another is eight minutes. The others rarely exceed four minutes. Oh, and one track is a remix … a REMIX, Neil Young is remixing, folks. Stop and think about that for a second. This album is definitely an odd bird, but it fits in an odd way. There are flaws lyrically, it is paced miserably, but like Neil’s savage guitar style, it does what it wants, flows how it flows, and would you want anything different?
