Monday, May 2, 2011

Album Review: Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Ragged Glory



In 1990 Neil Young had not worked with Crazy Horse for quite a while, and reunited they produced a long, loose, sloppy set of jams. Many of the songs are quite long, 7-10 minutes in duration, showcasing long, distorted guitar solos.

Isolating individual tracks is difficult, as it’s more about the riffs, of which there are plenty. Tracks like Country Home, Over and Over and Love To Burn have raw, dirty guitar riffage going through them, while the vocals are ropey as hell – no autotune here!

They make time for a little throwaway with the hokey Farmer John, while later Days That Used To Be takes the melody and subject matter of Bob Dylan’s My Back Page and runs it through the Horse filter, with very pleasing results. Less successful is Mother Earth, an “all join hands” style ballad which is a little tedious.

This is defiantly not a songwriter’s album. It’s about the feel and the guitar sound. Though it has one monumental song on it in the shape of F*!#in' Up which has a pounding beat and a dirty guitar sound. It’s as grunge as it gets, like most of the album, making it fit perfectly with the start of the nineties.

1 comment:

  1. "No autotune here," love it! Just reviewed this one myself on my blog. Looks like we feel about the same, especially when it comes to "Mother Earth." Like your blog!

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