Hmmmm. You do wonder just how necessary a Neil Young album review is. In many ways we might as well be discussing toast. Yeah, okay there are slight differences in texture or shade but ultimately, hey it's toast. There's nothing you're gonna read or hear that you don't already know, you either love the mutton-chopped old fool or you don't. It's not as if Neil Young's suddenly going to attract any new fans at this stair-lift stage of his career now is it?? What's that? Carlos Santana?….oh yeah…
I think we can rest assured though that 'Silver and Gold' certainly won't be troubling those sensible people at The Grammies. Opening up with a shrill blast of harmonica before settling into a warm Horlick's lull this is very much one of Young's gathering breath albums, an easy calm to follow the unseemly bluster of 'Broken Arrow'. The line between contemplative and mere navel-gazing is as thin as Young's voice though and too often here it's the fluff that's thrust in our face. All the pedal-steel guitar and Emmylou Harris in the world can't disguise the fact that this might just be a decent album if he ever gets round to finishing it.
An album about growing old and looking back it's not without it's highlights. 'Red Sun' is as beautiful a lullaby about memory and loss as anything he's done and the slow dissolve of 'Distant Camera' into a melancholy shimmer is the ache of love at it's most inarticulate and honest. Elsewhere though it all gets a bit Werther's Original, like being cornered in the pub by some old boy desperate to tell you how good things used to be round here.
Oh yeah, for perverse pleasure though try and grab a listen to 'Daddy Went Walkin'' third track in. That's right, 'Froggy Went A Courting' battered into a schmaltzy pulp. You get to Neil's age and I suppose you just don't give a toss.
Dusty, mellow, ruminative, Lou Reed's Hokie cousin does American pastoral again and that's about it. Oh and Paul Weller, if you're awake out there, we've just been afforded a glimpse of where you're heading mate and it sure ain't pretty.
