Freedom - Neil Young (1989)

ideated from: My birthday looms, so I’m just serving up some comfort food this week. All stuff that lives rent-controlled in my head.

In the fall of 1989, I spent some of the cash from my first real job on my first CD player. To go with it, I bought two new albums by old artists (because it’s pretty well-documented at this point that I was kind of a weird kid) that were recent releases: Dylan’s Oh Mercy and this one. Shout out to Bob Keyes, at the time the entertainment writer for my local paper, who made me interested in a lot of music I might not have gotten into otherwise including Young and Dylan.

Young, like Dylan, had kind of been in the wilderness through most of the 80s, defiantly doing what he wanted but with diminishing commercial returns.

Here you get a return to form, with a little of all the things that had made Young a unique character over the years on display in one place: wry humor, affecting narratives, lovely melodies, music that varies from stately country beauty to buzzing noise rock to motown-style soul.

Tracks I Liked

Crime In The City - an ominous and nihilistic shuffle

Hangin On A Limb - a whiplash back into beauty and hope

On Broadway - a nutty little noise-soul rave-up that goes off the rails in fantastic fashion

Wrecking Ball - Also on a great Emmylou Harris record.

Rockin In The Free World - one of his signatures tunes, here as both acoustic opener and Crazy Horse-fueled closer