I've been awfully busy these past two weeks, and haven't been able to
post my thoughts on these two albums. So I'll give the shortish
version of my combined feelings, since these two albums really seem
to blend into one another for me anyway.
When I listened to LOW last week, for the first time in over a year,
I really kinda dug it. I dislike the production style, but I think
it strangely works with the songs. LIFE however, I really don't like.
Count me as one who places LIFE at the absolute bottom of Neil's
canon. I was so disappointed when I first heard this album, mostly
because it was with Crazy Horse, and I had loved everything of theirs
I had heard previously. I did not hear this album until I had
acquired almost of all of Neil's other albums, however, so I think I
can understand how some fans may have found this to be a welcome
breath in 1987. What that welcome breath was, I can only imagine. I
guess I would have seen it as positive as well that the "Niko
production" seemed to stop on side two. Maybe Pancho and Ralph
finally jumped him in a hallway, tied him in a blanket, and locked
him in a janitorial closet until he learned that style is INFERIOR to
substance.
Mideast Vacation is a song that struck me as overly simple when I
first heard it, but I have grown to like it since. I think it's
smart, and musically more interesting than I heard on first listen.
Long Walk Home is where I nearly flushed this album. Firstly, I have
to say that the cadence of the chorus "It's such a Long Walk Home..."
struck me all wrong when I first heard it, and even to this day, I
just can't believe that the words "Long" "Walk" and "Home" are not
evenly spaced. It just rubs me the wrong way. But what kills this
song for me is the overblown production and sound effects. Here is a
song with good lyrics, a pretty decent tune, and an edgy political
theme. For a moment, imagine Neil and an acoustic guitar, and this
song. Powerful.
Enter Niko Bolas. "What this song needs is a deep echoing sound
pervading throughout, so that it sounds as though there is a choir
singing inside the hold of an oil tanker. That will really drive the
point of this song home. Ooh! And sound effects! I know, right
after Neil sings "giant guns raised," we'll put in GIANT GUN
SOUNDS!! Niko, you genius!"
These sound effects are retarded, I'm sorry. And I actually like the
sound effects on such songs as Shots, and even Inca Queen. Maybe
it's the gun sounds right after the word "guns" that drives me
nuts. "Oh, is that what a gun sounds like? Cool, thanks." Duh.
Around The World, however, is my least favorite song on this album.
Start with a beat that a gorilla could keep, add two chords, and
mix. Add a third chord, because the chorus has three words. Bored
yet? Let's spice things up with a really pussy sounding synth out of
absolutely nowhere, puncuated by the line, "Fashion Change, Style
Change." WOW, just the "guns" with the guns in the last song. Niko,
you genius you. Then back to Neil Young and Crazy Monkey for another
verse before Neil does his laughable, "you look beautiful" speech a
la Van Halen's "Unchained". To me, this song is one of those, "What
is he going to do next" songs, the bad kind.
Luckily, the album reaches it's low point here. I like Inca Queen.
Musically, it is obviously the child of Like An Inca. Thematically,
it's what would happen if ATGR and Cortez The Killer mated. Has
everyone else noted the spacecraft references in this song, "She
spoke of Silver from the sky, to pick them up when they would fly,"
that also appear in ATGR, "Flying Mother Nature's Silver seed to a
new home." I am a little bugged by the elephant reference, though.
There hasn't been a wild elephant in the Western hemisphere since the
last wooly one kicked it 15,000 years ago, even then, not in Peru.
Whatever, and war was never known to the Aztecs either, huh Neil?
The rest of the album, although not Neil's strongest songwriting, is
loose and fun rock 'n roll. It is what it is, without pretense, and
Niko is now locked in the janitor's closet, so the boys can let it
rip.
Phew, now I feel much better.
--PunkDavid
