![]() ![]() Neil Young certainly does, and that's why "Sleeps with Angels" is easily one of the most resonant and powerful recordings of the year. ![]() It may be better to burn out than to fade away, but it's better still to burn brightly and endure. It's as if Young comes not to bury Cobain, but to show how it could have been had the younger musician recognized that there is another option beyond the two suggested in "My My, Hey Hey." Maybe that's why the title tune, for all its verbal misgivings (like the "Too late/Too soon" counterpoint in the chorus) and note-grinding guitar grunge, seems more like an elegy than a lament. Rather than undercut the songs, though, the aural anxiety Young sprinkles through the album only intensifies the music, as if the noise and despair made the moments of melody and hope that much sweeter. Even the album's prettiest songs are hobbled by a sense of disquiet - like "Prime of Life," which flanks its sweetly harmonized "When I first saw your face/It took my breath away" bridge with menacing guitar and electronic clangor, or "A Dream That Can Last," which might pass for an old-time spiritual were it not for the death-march drum thumping ominously beneath its tinkling dance-hall piano. Even "Western Hero," with its gentle, elegiac melody and seemingly straightforward lyric, is left slightly off-center by the dark, distortion-drenched guitar that growls through its bridge.īut then, nothing on "Sleeps with Angels" is meant to be easy or obvious. A certain amount of that song's unease bleeds over into the slow, spacey sprawl of "Blue Eden," a moody reflection on fate and fatalism that's equal parts slow blues and feedback-filled grunge (imagine Lou Reed rewriting "Hunger Strike" and you'll have an idea). It's a masterful touch, intensely dramatic despite its low-key dynamics, but it's hardly the only such moment on the album. At first, the song seems to be a call for reconciliation and redemption, as Young sings of confusion and a loss of will before exulting in "the one whose magic touch can change your mind." That would explain the mixed emotions and curiously unresolved conclusion of "Change Your Mind," the album's magnum opus. It's almost as if Young, not knowing what to think this time around, is going by feel. Unlike "Rust Never Sleeps" (the album that gave us "My My, Hey Hey"), there's no easy division between the pastoral beauty of Young's folkie impulses and the over-amped crunch of his hard rock side here, everything is mixed together, as plaintive melodies float prettily over sludge-like guitars, and nasty, distortion-muddied counter-melodies undercut otherwise quiet arrangements. ![]() What Young wrestles with here are the basic issues of heroism and rebellion - of when to fight the good fight, and when to admit that the struggle is useless - and that gives the album a very different feel from most of the singer's work. ![]()
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