Recorded in six days and rushed out – first on the ‘net and now as an album release proper – Neil Young’s 32nd album is without a doubt his most controversial. It certainly doesn’t get any more direct than ‘Let’s Impeach The President’ (“for lyin’ and misleading his country to war”), the key track here and the one that’s drawn him the most flak from predictable quarters in the US.
With the split of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young following the live Four Way Street album in 1971, Neil Young was free to make a commercial-sounding album. This platinum blockbuster contained the number one hit ‘Heart Of Gold’ which sat neatly alongside such other fragile classics as 'Old Man', 'The Needle And The Damage Done' and 'Out Of The Weekend'.
From balmy folk revivalist to angst-rock totem, there are many Neil Youngs. Sometimes, you wish there was only one: the feckless, snarling fallen angel of On The Beach and Rust Never Sleeps.
Art of gold: the opening gig of Neil Young's three-night stand at Vicar St makes Bono, The Edge, Ronnie Wood and of course your correspondent Stuart Clark swoon. Photo: Mick Quinn
Art of gold: the opening gig of Neil Young's acoustic three-night stand in Vicar St makes Bono, Edge, Ron Wood and of course your correspondent Stuart Clark swoon. Pics: Mick Quinn
As Neil Young enters his fifth decade of writing and performing music, the world needs to be reminded of his god-like contributions, particularly as recent young disciples such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam have either burnt out or faded away.
If you were to look up the meaning of the word weld in the Oxford English Dictionary you'd find: *Weld v. unite (pieces of esp. heated metal etc.) into solid mass by hammering or pressure*. There's more of course, but that basically wraps it up.
It also wraps up Neil Young ... Crazy Horses' new double live album. A merciless wall of noise, Weld is all about guitars. Very loud guitars. It's also about chaos, albeit chaos in perfect motion, chaos in full flights, majestic, marauding - Weld in chaos, in control.
