![]() ![]() Named after the Buffalo Springfield song and Young’s Northern California ranch, Broken Arrow can be divided roughly into three sections: the first comprising three brooding epics (more than seven minutes apiece), the second made up of four shorter and rather more whimsical songs, and the third consisting of a ragged eight minute live version of Jimmy Reed’s ‘Baby, What You Want Me to Do’. ![]() In fact, whereas Sleeps With Angels recalls the spooky pathos of Tonight’s the Night, Broken Arrow seems suspiciously like a holding operation of the re-ac-tor/Life variety. Vague echoes of ‘Trans Am’ and ‘Change Your Mind’ there might be here songs as forlornly beautiful as ‘Prime of Life’ or ‘Safeway Cart’ there are not. On the other hand, playing Broken Arrow alongside Sleeps With Angels (the previous Neil Young/Crazy Horse album) does the new album few favors. It’s good to hear that raw, sludgy Crazy Horse sound again after the frantic, throttled thrashing of Mirror Ball, an album full of sound and fury, signifying, well, very little. ![]() ![]() The reunion comes as a relief to those of us who genuinely dislike Pearl Jam and aren’t just knee-jerk scapegoating Vedder and the boys. When Young closed his set with ‘Cortez the Killer’, it was so white-hot, so cauterizing, that not eyen the Eddie Vedder-less Pearl Jam could foul it up.Ī pregnancy term or so later, Young is back with the old gang - bassist Billy Talbot, drummer Ralph Molina, and guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro - though not with David Briggs, whose death last year has obliged Young to don the producer’s hat. Nine months ago, I stood in a field in England watching Neil Young close the Reading Festival and realized the following: If you can play a whole show with Pearl Jam and still took like a heroic old behemoth, then, son, you, surely are a fellow to be reckoned with. ![]()
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February 2023
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