Landing on Water

Landing on Water - Neil Young 1986
Why review this album? We've already done two Neil Young albums (Trans, Le Noise) and the idea that we'll be reviewing all Young's albums should immediately be stricken! The main reason to review "Landing on Water" is because so many people pass off Young's music from the 80s as terrible, and a divergence from what he did best in the decades before and after.  The album is 80s, experimental, and extremely listenable. In fact... it's fun, which is something special when you're singing about the weighty things that Young does (homelessness, war, the death of hippie-dom, poverty). It's really something that he manages to get quirky pop music with serious messages to meld into something more than just absolute cheese. Yes, there is some cheese here, but it's the good kind, think Wisconsin Cheddar. It works in his favor, the fact that he can play in these oddball pop landscapes without getting absolutely ruined by them. It's pretty incredible. This particular album has all sorts of typical 80's cheese moments: crummy synths, sing along choirs, slick production, etc. What is missing that you would normally experience in the typical pop crap of the age? Well, for starters the songs don't make me want to hurl. Young sings genuine themes in a passionate way without preaching. The total lack of filler is nice. What's cool as well is that the cover of the album is somewhat avant garde, instead of some airbrushed glamour shot.
Catchy tracks of the album: "People on the Street" and "Touch the Night"
Noteworthy good tracks on the album: "Hippie Dream" and "Bad News Beat"
Bonus Points: "Drifters" has kazoo-ish type noises that overlay the synth rifts.
Sidenote: This album was unpriced at CD Game Exchange, but had a previous pricetag from another store for $1.99 on it. When going to pay, the cashier didn't know what to charge and called over another employee for consultation, who in turn, reasoned "Well, its a Neil Young album, so its at least $5". Needless to say, I got it for the price I wanted, but ohhhh the reasoning!

Le Noise

Le Noise 2010 - Neil Young


So I sold my soul to the devil by buying this record.  The act of purchasing vinyl from Amazon.  As my alibi, I did it solely for the price.  Local stores were retailing this one for about $37, and I cannot justify paying that much for ONE record (unless is has been encrusted with gold plated rubies).  I honestly feel awful for small record stores, because I have no idea how they are supposed to sell new vinyl to folks who aren't rich or stupid, or both?


The album is, as far as I can tell, strictly guitar and vocals which are melded into a feedback drenched apocalypse.  The guitar is full of grit and static, and just might be played in an echo room vortex.  Neil is exorcising some real demons in the form of an "end of the world/end of his rock life" rock out explosion of ennui.  I mean, Eddie Vedder must be just pooping his pants right now.  That is not a dis.  Neil is doing what he does best.  He is dissecting himself and everything around in the most basic and honest ways.  Having really feasted on Neil's back catalog lately (most recently the really obscure 80's cannon) this is refreshingly diverse, odd, and unencumbered by anything resembling bullshit.  It is totally legit.


Produced by fellow Cannuck Daniel Lanois, the two Northerners kick up a good deal of drift and side winding washed out fuzz.  It works, I'm really not sure why, but it seems Neil really was just digging doing his thing.  There are flourishes of spanish guitar, tidbits of tunes long lost, and a slew of nimble/catchy odes to the art of singing about love and war.  He even gives a shout out to the greatest Neil Young album of all time, "TRANS" during the song, "Hitchhiker" where he lifts the hook from "Like an Inca".  Way to go Mr. Y, sampling your own work.  Neil has this strange knack for sounding like he is doing things on purpose; the purpose of making music that is interesting to him.   If you can tune into that, then you're golden.  He's jumped into all sorts of genres over the years and certainly had his share of drug induced/producer induced WTF moments committed to record, but this one seems truer than true. My question is does anybody actually still care?  For some reason I feel like Neil may have just blown straight past any actually radio format.  Will he ever get play again and really, does it matter?

Human Highway...

So, we went out of our way to rent the stupidly hard to find, and notoriously bad "Human Highway", a film by Neil Young, featuring Devo. Once again I will state that Vinyl Vagabonds is a vinyl records blog, but occasionally it happens that a certain vinyl purchase or two will send us venturing away from the vinyl medium to experience something... other. A vagabond of a film like "Human Highway" is something other alright. Not available on DVD and hard to track down on VHS (thank you for coming through Potomac Video), we gave this 80's trash monsterpiece a viewing. Can I recommend it? Not really. The centerpiece of the film is a completely psyched out performance of "Hey, Hey, My, My" by Neil and played with Devo. A rarer performance would be hard to imagine. The film itself has barely a shred of redeeming script, acting, or visuals. Neil does play the role of a the gas station simpleton very well and if you want to have a chuckle, that's probably where you will find it.

The story revolves around residents of a small town in the dessert of the west dealing with tough economic times whilst ne'er do wells from the local nuclear plant plot to dump nuclear waste into the nearby land. Dennis Hopper is a complete freak-out in this, Also there is a large nuclear missile, but I really have no idea where that comes from.

Oh, I almost forgot. The film features great music! That's why we sought it out in the first place. It has cuts from "Trans" by Neil. A great album of techno/rock wizardry before anybody but Kraftwork was even doing that sort of thing. Also featured are several great tracks from Devo of the early 80's, the best type of Devo for sure (unless you have had a chance to check out the new album "Something for Everybody", which from what I've heard so far is going to be a return to greatness).

TRANS

Neil Young - Trans 1982

We were recommended this record by reliable source, Rob of Smash records. He was working a record fair at Comet Ping Pong and noticed me eyeballing this oddball album. I'd be told that Neil Young went on several uncelebrated musical tangents in the 80's and that his foray into electronica was the most odd. My assumption was that Neil was tired of being a country rock music darling and wanted to expand his musical horizons. Either that or he was really, really freakin' high.

Before I say any more about this album, I feel it's important to note that Neil Young has been a favorite of mine since my undergrad years. I got sucked into the image of him as "The Godfather of Grunge" that the music press of the early 90's billed him. Hey, the music was good and some of it did sound pretty grungy... those reporters must be onto something! Well, it was a little longer till I started actually listening to Neil's larger catalogue. This guy had pretty wide range and tastes. Slow folky ramblings, rocking souther style epics, and everything in-between. Still, I was warned to stay away from the early 80's stuff. Neil went weird...

Trans is a weird album. Very weird. The first song on the album is generic southern, folk rock, and cheesy too. It could easily throw anyone off the idea that Neil was experimenting sonically. Everything else on the album is pure electronic synth odd freakout pleasure. I'm pretty sure he liked to dance the robot while writing this album. On record he makes frequent use of the robotronic voice altering microphone device, the vocoder. Think "auto tune" but not shitty. So what possessed Mr. Young to go from tunes like "Needle and the Damage Done", "Old Man", "Harvest Moon", "Southern Man", "Ohio", etc. to this type of computerized strangeness? Turns out that using the vocoder around his son (who has cerebral palsey) elicited an improved response in communication. Pretty nice, eh? Finding a better way to communicate with your ailing child is a much better story than being really, really high. Ultimately, none of that matters if it sounds like hell, which it absolutely does not. It sounds amazing. It's catchy, well written and has a good deal of surprises. He even says "yippee ki yi yay" several time in full on robot talk. Pure gold. Standout tracks; "Like an Inca", "Computer Cowboy", "We R in Control"

Seems the only way you're getting this album is on an import CD or a bootleg rip. We got lucky and found the vinyl version. Love it so much that the album sleeve is framed and adorns the top of our stairwell. Beauty. Also, it should be mentioned that portions of some of the songs appear in the movie "Human Highway", that Young directed. It's a comedy that he made with New Wave band Devo... It's purported to be incredibly bad and also, it's impossible to find. Maybe we review a Devo album next...