NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE : COLORADO

1. Think Of Me
2. She Showed Me Love
3. Olden Days
4. Help Me Lose My Mind
5. Green Is Blue
6. Shut It Down
7. Milky Way
8. Eternity
9. Rainbow Of Colors
10. I Do

Label : Reprise Records

Release Date : October 25, 2019

Length : 50:24

Review (AllMusic) : At a time when chaos and unpredictability hold sway in so much of the world, it's hard to fault anyone for wishing for something stable and familiar, even from someone as chronically unpredictable as Neil Young. In 2019, Young announced he was recording again with Crazy Horse, and after a handful of especially eccentric and uneven albums - 2016's Peace Trail, 2017's The Visitor, 2018's Paradox - the notion of Neil and Crazy Horse cranking up their amps and making some righteous noise sounded like the sort of comfort food many fans had been hungry for. However, in time-honored Neil Young tradition, 2019's Colorado is a bit different than what fans might have been expecting. Frank "Poncho" Sampedro, Young's longtime guitar foil in Crazy Horse, opted not to participate in their latest reunion, and Young recruited his occasional collaborator (and longtime Bruce Springsteen sideman) Nils Lofgren to take his place. Where Sampedro had a knack for goading Young into conjuring billows of howling brilliance from his axe, on Colorado, Lofgren instead gives him a strong, stable framework that allows Neil room to explore yet doesn't push him forward. As a result, this isn't a cathartic blowout in the manner of Rust Never Sleeps or Ragged Glory but instead harkens back to the focused yet ambling mood of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and Harvest, only with songs that are good but by no means exceptional. As with much of his work in the 2010s, Young's lyrics here reflect an autumnal concern with politics, the environment, and mortality, and they're thoughtful and of their moment, but they sound more like blog posts than clearly thought-out messages. While this is hardly unexpected from rock's leading "First Thought Best Thought" man, they're still not up to the standard of his best music; after a while, repeatedly informing us he's an old white guy on "She Showed Me Love" sounds less like self-awareness and more like he's not sure if we know, which we certainly do. That said, if Colorado isn't the great soul-satisfying rocker we were dreaming of, the dusty howl of Young's electric guitar work is here in plentiful supply - not at full strength but loud enough to matter (especially on "Shut It Down" and "Help Me Lose My Mind") - Young is properly engaged with his material, and his interplay with Lofgren, bassist Ralph Molina, and drummer Billy Talbot is a reminder of why Crazy Horse has been on hand for so much of his greatest work. At a time when a great album from Neil Young would have been more than welcome, Colorado is instead a good one, but it's recognizably the work of a great artist, and that's more than can be said of the last few offerings Young has given us.

Review (Pitchfork) : Young's fourth album of the century with his most famous band is simple and heartfelt, gritty and tender. Many have tried, but no one plays guitar quite like Neil Young. He solos like something's buried under the fretboard that he's trying to dig out. When he transposes to acoustic settings, the inertia of his playing can cause his legs to cycle up and down wildly, a source of energy traveling through his entire body, dissipating in the lonesome exhaust of his fragile singing voice and harmonica playing. Even when he was a young man, this sound expressed a world-weariness that complemented his lyrics. But his music always seemed engineered to age with him-to rust and burn and keep on going. No group better suits this sensibility than Crazy Horse, the pared-down accompanists he first recruited for his sophomore album, 1969's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. The band-which then featured the late guitarist Danny Whitten, bassist Billy Talbot, and drummer Ralph Molina-were built to tear things up. They kept it simple. Young's guitar solos sometimes consisted of just one note, looped and clipping until the whole band seemed to lock in place with him. And while Young explored a wide variety of genres in the following decades, from pastoral country to arena rock to instrumental guitar, this primal sound will always be the one most closely associated with him. So when Young reassembles Crazy Horse for new music, there are always heightened expectations. Colorado marks their fourth studio album of the 21st century, following a dense concept album (2003's Greendale), an unremarkable set of royalty-free cover songs (2012's Americana), and a brilliantly meandering double album (2012's Psychedelic Pill). Situated around those releases have been a spotty run of albums (even by Young's standards), building toward his most inscrutable era since the '80s. Young himself seems to acknowledge his current standards in the accompanying documentary Mountaintop, as he instructs his reunited bandmates to work quickly but meaningfully during its 11-day sessions. "It doesn't have to be good," he instructs. "Just feel good." Despite his empowering mantra, a dark cloud hangs over Colorado. Its songs are furious ("Help Me Lose My Mind"), haunted ("Milky Way"), and remorseful ("Green Is Blue"). In "She Showed Me Love," the closest thing this album has to a characteristic Crazy Horse epic, Young sings about a new generation carrying the torch for climate change and imagines how they might view him. "You might say I'm an old white guy," he speak-sings. "I saw old white guys trying to kill mother nature." It goes without saying that the "she" in the song title refers to our planet, and the past tense refers to the shortening timelines of both the narrator and subject. The long jam eventually slows to a trudge and makes sure you feel every passing minute. The rest of the record is shaded with subdued tones. In addition to Young's old bandmates Talbot and Molina, he's accompanied by Nils Lofgren-the E Street Band guitarist who also played with Young on career highlights After the Gold Rush and Tonight's the Night. While Lofgren is best known for a near-athletic virtuosity, here he mostly colors in the lines. (His tap-dancing percussion in the sweet, Sleeps With Angels-referencing "Eternity" is the clearest showcase for his gifts.) Even for Crazy Horse, the music is simple but heartfelt. On tracks like "Olden Days" and "Rainbow of Colors," Young's basic folk melodies are rendered grittier and heavier by the band, if no less tender. "When you see those geese in the sky, think of me," go the album's opening lines, and Young often sings from this distance, watching over a world without him. Outside a few words of gratitude in the gorgeous closing track "I Do," his lyrics rarely seem autobiographical, but they do seem newly focused and reflective. And while the documentary is certainly not the most riveting film Young's put his name to (highlights include a story about producer John Hanlon getting poison oak), it does occasionally offer a pure snapshot of his creative process. Seeing how ecstatic Young gets over a subtle tambourine part in "Olden Days" may permanently alter how you hear that song. It offers a reminder of his passion, how the studio remains a source of excitement and joy after all these years. And yet, if it were up to him, none of us would be listening to this album in its final form. "I get to hear it the way we made it. Too bad about most of you," he wrote on his website, bemoaning the current state of sound quality via streaming. The concern speaks to a lifelong battle with the industry, also discussed in his new 240-page book, but it also speaks to the struggle he's faced as a solo recording artist this decade. Whether food justice or the destruction of the planet, his muses have often seemed muffled or misconstrued when they finally reach the market. Colorado surpasses those recent works by speaking directly to that ephemeral nature of life, our tragedies and joys and disappointments. "There's so much we didn't do," Young and his bandmates sing together, their ages averaging around 73, in a ballad called "Green Is Blue." And if one thing has remained unwavering about them, it's that you know they mean every word.

Review (Rolling Stone) : Neil Young and Crazy Horse Return With the Ragged, Glorious 'Colorado - On their first record in seven years, Young and his longtime backing band make the kind of cranky downhome grunge we've come to expect and love. At one point, the working title for the new Neil Young and Crazy Horse album was Pink Moon. It describes the eleven days the band spent in April, hunkered down in a studio at an elevation of 9,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains, recording their first new record in seven years. (Oxygen tanks were involved.) But Colorado, the title Young eventually settled on, is more fitting for the record. It encompasses the ragged earthiness of Crazy Horse that dates back to 1968, when Young first jammed with the then-known Rockets at the Whisky a Go Go. More than 50 years later, the fuzzed-out riffs and mellow harmonies are still intact, the lyrics just as heartfelt. Young's signature searing harmonica opens the album ("Think of Me") as he sings about oceans and prairies. Pushing 74 years old, he's lost several close friends and bandmates in his life - the recent passing of his longtime manager Elliot Roberts has been particularly devastating - and on "Olden Days," he faces tragedy with the same honesty he did on Tonight's the Night. "Where did all the people go? Why did they fade away?" he whimpers over searing reverb. "They meant so much to me and now I know/That they're here to stay in my heart." The absence of guitarist Frank "Poncho" Sampedro - the heart and soul of the Horse - is highly noticeable. Since 1975's Zuma, Sampedro has backed Young's guitar with blistering riffs that only Lukas Nelson of Promise of the Real has been close to emulating. But Nils Lofgren, who has played with Young sporadically since 1970, fills that void. The sprightly autumnal piano chords on "Eternity" echo "Till the Morning Comes" from After the Gold Rush, a record an 18-year-old Lofgren learned how to play keyboards for. Young has been playing several of Colorado's tracks on the road for the past year, and it's satisfying to see them come together in such a seamless fashion. The gentle "Green and Blue" flows into the ethereal "Milky Way," while the band sings in unison for the anthemic "Rainbow of Colors" as Ralph Molina's drums follow along. The album's closer "I Do" provides the gorgeous subtlety that "Through My Sails" does on Zuma, a digestif to the madness. In 2019, Young is one of the few rockers of his generation who's still making music on the same meandering, uncompromising terms he staked out in his youth. "You might say I'm an old white guy," he proposes on the eco-friendly "She Showed Me Love." He is, and we do, and he's working that old-white-guy magic all over this record.