Neil Young

With a little help from the London Symphony Orchestra and some outstanding country rock musicians and singers, Neil Young's most popular album finds him singing about his search for new love, age and mortality, and losing a good friend to heroin abuse. Rich wooden tones and exquisitely layered arrangements bring Harvest's tracks to life.

At the end of this, five'll getcha ten, most of you are going to be exclaiming lividly, "O what
vile geeks are rock critics! How quick are they to heap disapproval on one whose praises
they once sang stridently at the first sign of us Common Folk taking him to heart en masse!
How they revel in detesting that which we adore!" However often I might second with a
hearty "right on!" such a perception of the critic/audience chasm, though, I will... More >

Anticipation and mindless instant acceptance made for critical overreaction when this came out, but it stands as proof that the genteel Young has his charms, just like the sloppy one. Rhythmically it's a little wooden, and Young is guilty of self-imitation on "Alabama" and pomposity on on the unbearable London Symphony Orchestra opus "There's a World." But those two excepted, even the slightest songs here are gratifying musically, and two of them are major indeed--"The Needle and the Damage Done" and the much-maligned (by feminists as well as those critics of the London Symphony Orchestra) "A Man Needs a Maid." (Grade - B+)