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Without that previous experience, this album might have sounded like so much grungy sludge when I bought it.

Luckily for the new exposee, Neil has thoughtfully provided a live DVD (accoustic, so it's not too much Horse overkill) that fleshes out the storyline. Buy this CD, but watch the DVD first. With that concert under your belt, the true power of these songs rise to the surface.

Regarding the story and music... some comparisons to Our Town are apt -- put that great play through a blender with Neil's earlier multi-generational and drug-related works (think Harvest & Tonight's the Night) and you get a good idea of what he's trying to do. The tunes are vintage Horse -- more Zuma and Broken Arrow than Ragged Glory. The melancholy that permeates the middle half of this record seems indicative of Neil's view on society as a whole: he doesn't get it, he doesn't particularly like it, and it makes him sad.

Lucky for us: a sad, cranky Neil Young makes some beautiful and thought-provoking music.


Pure Inspiration!   August 28, 2003
 10 out of 12 found this review helpful

I'm going to take a controversial stand right from the start and say that "Greendale" is Neil's masterpiece. If a masterpiece is defined as the culmination of an artist's talents and career, then I don't think I'm exagerating. There have been some upset fans saying how dare Neil play an entire new set on tour, but don't judge until you have heard this story. The classic Crazy Horse heavy, distorted groove grabs you in "Falling from Above", and Neil starts by saying "Seemed like that guy singing there been doing it for a long time, is there anything he knows that he ain't said?" He knows this album is something bigger than himself, and as he explains on the bonus DVD he would be driving to the sessions and stop along the road periodically to write lyrics. Sometimes they were there, sometimes not. But the story of the Green family came from somewhere else. It is the muse speaking through Neil, and for the first time in his career an entire album centers on the same cast of characters. The DVD is essential; it's Neil solo, acoustic, and mesmerizing, narrating the story between songs, explaining that he didn't know what was going to happen, and the band would be emotionally affected by the news he would deliver each day as the tale unfolded. That feeling is captured in the music. It's Neil and Crazy Horse at their finest, especially at the explosive finale with "Sun Green" and "Be the Rain," two new classics that will certainly become a part of the live repertoire. In fact, the only criticism I can find is that 'Pancho' Sampedro is not a part of the band, something that might bother purists. Perhaps Neil wanted a leaner sound with just Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot acompanying his raw guitar sounds. So be it. You can't find fault with an artist who dares to surrender himself to an impulse after 30+ years of success.


Something old, something new, something blue...   September 6, 2003
 10 out of 11 found this review helpful

A very cohesive solid album, but rather than extol it, I'd rather address the reviewer who asks "If this is the Worst Neil album ever?" Obviously, he/she feels differently.

1. Complaint: the lyrics are banal.
Answer: Neil is speaking through plain spoken small town folks. His voice is true to his characters.

There is nothing new under the sun. Therefore, we look for inspired delivery. I absolutely love the delivery when Neil's Granpa says, "It ain't an honor to be on TV. And it ain't a duty either."

Since I work in electric policy, I do love when Sun Green takes on the semi-fictitious "Power-Corp." I'm not sure it is my speakers, but my one production complaint is that the megaphone lyrics should ring out more clearly.

Compaint 2. That the music never goes anywhere.
Answer 2: Except for Sun Green, these lives generally don't go anywhere! From the start, the best Neil (ALL NEIL!) matches the music to the content. Do you want "Grandpa's Interview" to sound like Southern Man? I don't think so. If you need that, play that. Furthermore, Neil is giving detached omniscient narrative. There is enough melodramatic impassioned first person in the arts. This is not that. He already wrote "Down by the River." Neil is not going to write the exact same song twice. Even professional reviewers seem to make this type of mistake. Neil knows just how far or little the travels or "goes!" It is exactly how he wants it, or it is not released. With a novice artist, you can ask this question. If it is Neil, you can't ask that question -- you must ask WHY the music doesn't seem to go anywhere.

This reviewer reminds me of two fans that I saw commenting on "Going Home" of "Are You Passionate." They had no idea why a song that opens with an image of Custer's Last Stand would end abruptly and unexpectedly! And there's another reason to study history! And generally not one of the reason's that you're fed.

I find the music to be a different flavor of smoldering and the melodies quite sweet. I'm headed for another play.


Disappointed Angel Dust   October 29, 2003
 9 out of 10 found this review helpful

I have read and enjoyed the reviews on this site many times but this is the first time I have felt moved to add my three cents in response to such gross misunderstanding of a great work. First of all, I am not one of those all-Neil-does-is-great sycophants. I thought Are You Passionate? was the most disappointing record of last year. I also have low regard for Silver And Gold,Harvest Moon,Landing On Water,This Note's For You and Old Ways.But let's call a spade a spade.Greendale is the best record of the year,probably the last few years and a solid addition to the top 5 or so by one of the most acclaimed and beloved artists in rock history.
The point is reflection.Neil has always been known for the self-reflective statement.To a fault,if to judge by the legion of lame,self-pitying,whiny legions of imitators he has inspired in his wake.On this record,he has chosen to reflect himself through the stories of others.
1st Criticism of this record by "reviewers": songs are boring,meander too long,all sound the same etc. Well,the point to this work is that everyone's life is a song. Everyone,not just flashy self-possessed rock stars of which Neil is very self-admittedly one of himself. And if the life is a song,should not the song reflect the form and feeling of the life itself?? The people whose stories are here told lead the slow,meandering, repetitive lives that we who live in big cities wish to stay as far away from as possible.Those who are bored by the songs may not wish to be reminded of the slowness and seeming meaninglessness of life itself.Can't really blame them,but every life dosen't have a chorus,dosen't resolve into the formulaic,dosen't burn out and not fade away in the accepted fashion. Because make no mistake,the "Granpa" who other "reviewers" have so ridiculed is just as "punk-rock" as Young's fabled song-heroes Johnny Rotten,Powderfinger and Bruce Berry.The fact that he happpens to be an 80 year old on a farm in the middle of a typical small town shouldn't cloud the issue.The surface of the record does seem boring and monotonous. But once you look past the surface INTO the characters, all the drama rises to the surface.The battles these people wage on a daily basis are just as dramatic, tragic and heroic in their "small" way as any household name you might care to mention.The songs reflect the time and place and the lives lived.The music is perfectly appropriate to that purpose.
2nd Criticism: The music dosen't "rock" like the other Crazy Horse records e.g."it's no Rust or Ragged Glory or Tonight's The Night". Duhhhh. Those albums were reflective of the time and place they were created in.For Neil to even try to replicate those brilliant works would be to tarnish them. It would be a facetious and wholly dishonest lie.Now I don't know about you but that don't sound like Neil to me. Even people who don't care for his work give him the respect he deserves for being the most uncompromised non-underground artist of his (or,for that matter,any)generation,commercially speaking.So what's the surprise?? In the 70's,when The Beach Boys and Joni Mitchell among others were liltingly lamenting the loss of ecosystems aplenty,Neil was unrelentingly inside his own head,offering debauched and decadent meisterwerks such as "On The Beach" and "Tonight's The Night".When everyone was throwing out concept LP's like confetti,Neil's were dangerously fragmented,mixing styles and viewpoints,sewing recording sessions staged years apart together into rough patchworks of ragged,groovy glory.So it's 2003,everyone's tired of Bono-Sting state-of-the-world mothers-of-the-brazilian-diappeared let's all weep and send in our five bucks to Amnesty International sob-moan.Concept albums are so far out of favor that many reading this might not know what the hell the concept means. So Neil in 2003 makes an ecologically-concerned concept album about people living in a boring little town on the edge of nowhere.Not only that,but it's an unrelentingly unpolished slab of folk-blues sludge that sounds like nothing more than a rehearsal tape of Neil and Crazy Horse with a couple mikes aimed in the general vicinity.Again,what's the problem with that? Are the self-proclaimed Neil-freaks who have panned the album so out of touch with the aims of this artist who has moved them so much in the past by sticking to his goals and visions so fiercely? And do the people who hear the album as simply unfinished and boring really wish to listen instead to the peers of Neil, who endlessly flog their 30-year-old albums and endlessly preen and prance on HBO specials in a vain attempt to approximate their long-gone crdibility and talent? Or how about the artists who valiantly attempt to copy old styles and directions left by others long ago,principally trailblazers like Neil from the distant past? Do people wish to endlessly stroked,never confronted by their heroes?? Would they really shell out their $80 for the 30-year anniversary Neil-plays-"Harvest"-in-it's-entirety tour rather than hear him play new inspiring unfamiliar material??? I fear so.But then again,that's why Neil means so much to us.He don't do the things THEY do.So let's at least value it while he's here. He's trying to tell us something about us and them and himself.Is there any more telling or moving moment in Neil's work as when Gran'pa at the moment of his expiration cries out that a voice is filling his head,"Telll that guy to shut up! I don't know where the hell he comes up with this stuff!". This moment expresses the pain of the creation at the realisation that his fate is sealed,and the pain of the creator himself at having to fulfill his own mysterious plan.On and on,level upon level.There are many such moments sprinkled throughout the monolithic,daunting whole of "Greendale".But they are sprinkled,not shoved in your face.They must be looked for,searched out.They drift through your head,leaving a hazy residue not unlike the "Devil Dust" Satan himself drops into the drink of one of the characters in the story. I think it's worth it,if one has the time,to seek these mysteries out,not to solve them,not to find the perfect answers,but the perfect question.I, for one,wish to be confronted and challenged by those I admire and I thank God for the dust sprinkled in my soul by the "Disappointed Angel" himself,Neil Young.