To me, this has always formed a diptych with After The Gold Rush, especially since I once had them taped as each side of a C90 cassette. It’s a similar sound to Gold Rush, quite stripped down and acoustic (apparently partly because a back injury made it hard for Young to play electric guitar), but I think there’s a bit more support going on – steel slide guitar, some banjo on Old Man courtsesy of James Taylor, even some orchestral work on A Man Needs A Maid, plus backing vocals from Crosby, Still, Nash, and Linda Rhonstadt. Thus, I think, it’s a bit of a fuller album and with slightly better songs, much like Nick Drake’s Bryter Layter is similar to, but slightly better than, Five Leaves Left.
It’s more Americana (Canadiana?) mostly
touching on relationships and loneliness. Heart of Gold is the search for a
good person, while Old Man is kind of a reverse of Cat Stevens’ Father To Son,
with the young man comparing himself to the old man “needing someone to love me
the whole day through”. Are You Ready For The Country is more of a bop, Between
The Needle And The Damage Done is about the dangers of drugs (and consider how
many big names OD’ed in the preceding couple of years), and Words actually gives
us some classic Neil Young electric guitar soloing (I guess his back got better).
Neil Young has never had the most powerful
or expressive of voices, but it sounds to me like he’s a got a bit more range
and depth on this album compared to Gold Rush. I still think they make a good
diptych, but also that this is the better one.
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