Neil Young

Silver and Gold is a great Neil Young album. It's warm and comfortable-sounding, filled with totally unpretentious lyrics reflecting on what it's like to settle into old age and old love with the hindsight of a young heart. Even the casual fan can gush over the warm folk rock and amorous lyrics here. "Buffalo Springfield Again" finds Young pining for the past days of playing with the seminal quintet. "Red Sun" paints vivid images of the same kind of cohabitating-in-the-country daydream that Dylan sang of in 1970's "Sign on the Window."

Previously, Young's bad records have always had the mark of weirdness on them--impossible songs, twisted politics, stupid clothes. These 10 well-culled copyrights, two from the '80s and only four from 2000, are something new and ominous, because they're dull. They smell of equine methane: the old-fart hegemony that fuels alt-country, AC radio, and literary anthologies canonizing Ry Cooder, Ernie K-Doe, and Spooner Oldham. So though Duck Dunn and Jim Keltner get more beats going than Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina ever will, their mild funk is just another species of roots politesse, and Neil's self-indulgently halting vocals open the dismaying possibility that he takes Will Oldham seriously. True love isn't this boring, Young must know that. Hell, the Buffalo Springfield weren't this boring either. But they are now. (Grade: C+)