Neil Young With Crazy Horse
Fu##in’ Up
★★★★
REPRISE
Those overwhelmed by Neil Young’s Archives onslaught lately may be considering sitting this one out: Fu##in’ Up presents latter-day Crazy Horse, with guitar foil Nils Lofgren, plus Promise Of The Real’s Micah Nelson (piano/guitar), performing 1990’s beloved Ragged Glory in sequence, bar closer Mother Earth (Natural Anthem), last November at Toronto’s 200-capacity Rivoli club.
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In a move that some may deem wilfully misleading, the songs have been retitled using relevant lyric fragments, “allowing them to be here now”, and Young’s refusing to calling it a live album. Though 1991’s Weld definitively documents Ragged Glory-concurrent performances, there’s an undeniable zip to these ones. In January, Young revealed he’d been fighting arthritis in his hand, but that at Rivoli he’d “finally discovered a way around the pain”. Certainly, he bashes his strings with renewed vigour, if not always fluidly, and on 15-minute A Chance On Love (AKA Love And Only Love) summons a feedback tsunami worthy of 1991’s noise-only Arc.
Tracklisting
City Life
Feels Like A Railroad
Heart Of Steel
Broken Circle
Valley Of Hearts
Farmer John
Walkin’ In My Place
To Follow One’s Own Dream
Chance On Love
Fu##in’ Up is out now on Reprise.
Listen/Buy: Spotify | Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV
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Photo: Neil Young at the 2016 Beale Street Music Festival. Credit Alamy.