ALBUM REVIEW: Neil Young - Harvest

    By 1972, Neil Young was finally on the verge of superstardom. Two years prior, Neil Young had joined the new and incredibly popular super-group of Crosby, Stills & Nash - while a group filled with such massive creativity undoubtedly led to what can only be described as a powder-keg of a band, the resulting Déjà Vu album becoming one of the year's biggest albums and remains an enduring snapshot into the Laurel Canyon music scene. Even with the success, each member was more than keen to be left to their own devices, and Neil wasn't alone - in fact, Neil towers above the rest with his multi-instrumental talent and rich craft for songwriting resulted in the brilliant After the Gold Rush album of the same year, easily the best record from the first wave of CSNY solo projects. It was a fairly high-profile release, and paired with his time in CSNY really broke Young into the mainstream - however, this is the album that made Young a superstar. Perhaps not as adventurous as After the Gold Rush, the sporadic and sometimes more personal nature of Harvest is something that sets it apart in what is already a pretty excellent solo catalog - dare I say, it may be my favorite of his so far.

    Because of the incredibly serendipitous nature of the album's recording, you may be surprised to see that Neil's usual backing group has no involvement here - gone are Crazy Horse from this album in favor of a group of assorted session musicians nicknamed The Stray Gators that accompanies Young on a variety of the album's tracks. Admittedly, I don't find them to be as tight as Crazy Horse, even if the line-up of musicians certainly has balls, evident on songs like the blues-y "Are You Ready for the Country?" or the jam-heavy album closer "Words (Between the Line of Ages)". Still, this group's more "mellow" sound in comparison to the pure rockin' energy of Crazy Horse certainly builds its own atmosphere, evident on the album's most enduring moments like "Heart of Gold" or "Old Man", which I'm sure I'll have a lot to say about more later on. This isn't the entire album, of course, as Young's musical output does vary even on his own albums. This is where one may think that Harvest fails to punch up to Gold Rush, as it isn't nearly as diverse even with some experimentation - even more unfortunate, that experimentation comes in the form of "There's a World". If ever there were a sound that isn't suited for Neil, it's a string orchestra.

    With that aside, it's important to note this is Neil's biggest commercial success for a reason. Easily the strongest aspect of Neil Young is his lyricism and songwriting style, and Harvest truly is a tour-de-force of Young, the gentle and the heavy. The one-two combo opening of "Out on the Weekend" into the title track is a phenomenal way to kick things off, with the former's driving back beat and thumping acoustic riff bleed wonderfully into the slower slide-guitar work of "Harvest" in what is an incredible sign of the music to follow. "Heart of Gold" remains one of Neil's most well-known songs, and not without good reason - it's certainly one of the most accessible songs I've heard from Neil's catalog, up there with "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" in terms of commercial potential - one other song on Harvest hits that mark, and that's the heartbreaking beauty of "Old Man", which is my pick for the album's greatest moment. These are mostly slower moments, though, and moments like the previously mentioned "Are You Ready for the Country?" or the spun-out "Alabama", with the latter being amongst the album's most kick-ass moments, even if it is essentially "Southern Man 2" in practice. It all culminates with "The Needle and the Damage Done", which remains one of Neil's most haunting ballads to this day, and an unfortunate foreshadowing of the darkness to come in his music.

    For all the success that Harvest brought, this marks a dividing line in the career of Neil Young - the albums that would immediately follow, known as The Ditch Trilogy, is some of the darkest music in popular music, as Neil became disillusioned by fame and personal tragedy. This is a snapshot of Neil Young just before he became one of the biggest names in music. Harvest is perhaps safer than After the Gold Rush, but it's not much of a stretch to call it somewhat of an improvement over his previous solo albums, even if it isn't as consistently beautiful as Gold Rush or as rockin' as Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. Harvest exchanges these for a real heartfelt quality that verges on isolation, and the result is a gut punch of an album that'll pick you up right after knocking you down - classic Neil.

RATING: ✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯

Listen to Harvest.