Music. Fork in the road. Neil Young
Always at the forefront of the environmental battle, and setting an example for all to follow, Neil Young has once again become (or so I would say) one of the protesters and finest songwriters of the 70s and 80s. Remember ‘Ohio’, among others.
At a time when Americans were dreaming of and buying ever bigger, and therefore ever more polluting, 4×4s, Neil Young transformed his 1959 Lincoln Continental into an electric car (see www.lincvolt.com!), an eco-friendly gamble that was the inspiration for this new album, ‘Fork In The Road’.
But it’s also true that this opus was awaited and feared, ready even to be blasted by the most acid pens of the music press, the project having (once again) led Neil Young to postpone the release of eventful albums, including the famous recording at the start of this millennium with Crazy Horse, and above all the first volume of the ‘Archives’, postponed for the umpteenth time.
This album is all the more eagerly awaited as it comes out exactly forty years after the release of the loner’s first solo album, and for that reason alone it is a landmark album in Neil Young’s career.
As usual, the singer takes us on a road trip, paying tribute to his mechanic buddy, “Johnny Magic”, and slamming the Bush administration and the banks that have led the country into disaster.
Musically, the album is hard-hitting and, like the Lincoln, electric. Neil Young delivers blistering riffs with a rhythm as intense as the pistons on the loner’s famous car. A thoughtful philosopher, Neil Young slips two more metaphysical tracks into the album, ‘Light A Candle’ and ‘Sing A Song’, but doesn’t shy away from pushing the envelope when necessary, with tracks that kick ass, such as the wacky ‘Fork In The Road’, or the superb ‘Get Behind The Wheel’, on which Neil vibrates his blues roots.
Finally, a personal message to the loner: in the last track of this opus, ‘Sing A Song’, Neil Young tells us that ‘a song doesn’t change the world’. I know, Neil, that a song won’t change the world, but without it, the world won’t evolve. In its time, ‘Ohio’ was more a cry than a song, just as Joan Baez was more than a singer. At 63, Neil, don’t you feel like shouting as loud as you used to? Even if, as you so aptly sing, ‘one song doesn’t change the world’.
