Colorado/ Neil Young and Crazy Horse - rock, Americana

By Narendra Kusnur

Album: Colorado
Artiste: Neil Young and Crazy Horse
Genre: Rock, Americans
Label: Reprise Records
Rating: ****

By releasing his 39th studio album Colorado, Canadian star Neil Young has inched past Bob Dylan’s tally of 38. But unlike Dylan, whose voice and songwriting style changed considerably over the years, Young has remained more or less the same in these areas.

One of the main attractions of Colorado is the reappearance of multi-instrumentalist Nils Lofgren in Young’s on-and-off backing band Crazy Horse, after some 47 years. The regular bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina continue to hold the rhythm section.

Like with any new release by Young, irrespective of whether he's assisted by Crazy Horse or not, Colorado comes with plenty of expectations. One may instantly complain that it isn’t in the same class as earlier masterpieces like After The Gold Rush, Harvest, Comes A Time, Zuma, Old Ways, Harvest Moon and Mirrorball. And listeners will have a valid point there.

Yet, in terms of songwriting and execution, there’s a certain consistency in Colorado which makes it highly listenable. The nasal voice, described as a counter-tenor, retains its magic, and the guitars flow effortlessly. Unlike his 2012 album Psychedelic Pill, where he focused on long numbers, Young crosses the time barrier only once on the nearly 14-minute ‘She Showed Me Love’, a quintessential Young song with a heavily-improvised outro filled with choruses and guitar flourishes.

The opening track ‘Think Of Me’ begins with trademark harmonica and the lines “When you see the geese in the sky, think of me.” It’s a dedication to his former wife Pegi Young, who died of cancer earlier this year, and the whole approach to the song is vintage Young.
Shades of grunge mark ‘Help Me Lose My Mind’ and ‘Shut It Down’, the latter working as a guitar-drenched protest song with the lines “People trying to save this earth from an ugly death have to shut the system down.”

The nostalgic ‘Milky Way’ has a dash of blues, as Young sings “I was sailing in the Milky Way looking at memories that weren’t that day”. The concluding track ‘I Do’ is a simple ballad for his current partner Daryl Hannah, as he sings “Thanks for making this happen again” and asks “Why do I believe in you?”

To be sure, the album has monotonous numbers like ‘Eternity’ and ‘Rainbow Of Colours’. The cynics may argue that Young is still sticking to an ancient formula that worked often in the past, and that there's nothing new in the overall mix of songs.

But let’s be fair. The main draw is that Colorado has its wonderful moments and there's enough to keep you hitting the repeat button. There may be no anthems like ‘Heh, Heh, My, My’, ‘Sugar Mountain’, ‘Powderfinger’ or ‘Ohio’, but it’s got the Neil Young stamp written all over.