Neil Young has an album, a tour, and a book (or "book") out there just now. The book is a bloggish memoir called Waging Heavy Peace, and the album (tour too, I suppose), is Psychedelic Pill. Sounds like Rolling Stone liked it, Pitchfork thought it was self-indulgent, Stereogum gave it an album-of-the-week, and the A.V. Club was impressed:
...what makes Young compelling isn’t just the fact he evolves—it’s that his leaps happen sharply, erratically, and often perversely. In an industry that traditionally tries to cage and tame artists, Young has routinely chewed his own leg off to escape expectation...
But amid Young’s restless, reckless explorations, the legendary songwriter has always made a point to go home again. Albums like 1990’s Ragged Glory and 1996’s Broken Arrow are solid slabs of rootsy, jam-drenched guitar rock anchored firmly in Young’s sea of uncertainty. It’s no coincidence that those albums were made with Crazy Horse, the meat-and-potatoes backing band that’s been with him sporadically since 1969—the year Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere cemented Young’s most beloved identity, that of a cranky, cranked-amp outsider able to pierce hearts and eardrums with equal passion.
It’s also no coincidence that Young’s latest circling of the wagons, the wistful Psychedelic Pill, is his first full album with Crazy Horse since Broken Arrow. His shaggy memoir, Waging Heavy Peace, was just released, and in many ways Pill is a companion to the book’s nostalgic sprawl. Music being Young’s primary medium, however, the album is far better at focusing Young’s rambling tangle of ideas, impressions, recollections, and emotions—even throughout the staggering, 27-minute opening track, “Driftin’ Back.” With a title that telegraphs its intent and barely buffers the shock, the long, shambolic song makes no bones about its voyage through the past. It’s a sober trip, though. As Waging Heavy Peace reveals, Psychedelic Pill is ironically the first album Young has written since giving up booze and pot to reconvene Crazy Horse (just before recording Pill’s warm-up, Americana, a rollicking disc of folk standards)...
(And dammit, the 'we know what you want' gremlins have wandered away from google & infested youtube. No, I don't want to see Neil Young's most famous and/or popular works; I want the newest. Search should not be so hard. Divest, Google. Please. Return to your roots.
Meanwhile, this appears to be the place to peruse the official videos, many of them less than 16 and/or 28 minutes long.)
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