Young on song after 30-year wait for LP

TOAST

Two decades on, Neil Young finally releases Toast, an album he shelved in 2001 as it was too sad. That’s quite the statement, with Young no stranger to heartache and break-up songs, not to mention Tonight’s The Night’s raw grief, but these seven tracks all bring the darkness.

On opener Quit, a low-key song with a simplicity close to Harvest, he and his backing singers repeat “Don’t say you love me” until quietly fading away. Standing In The Light Of Love has the classic Crazy Horse sound, urgent guitars, galloping drums, a song that could fit on Rust Never Sleeps, while Goin’ Home, with lyrics about Custer making his last stand, is redolent of Powderfinger.

Quit and Goin’ Home were resurrected on 2002’s Are You Passionate? with Gateway Of Love listed on the cover but not included on the album.

Ten minutes long, Young pleading “Help me now I’m sinking fast” before ripping into an extended guitar solo, it’s been played live, as has Standing In The Light Of Love, released as a single, while Timberline, about a religious logger who loses his job, is the second single.

Young fanatics and completists will therefore be most interested in How Ya’ Doin’ and Boom Boom Boom, both never previously heard.

The former is a seven-minute minor key lament for lost love and shattered dreams, while final track Boom Boom Boom stretches over 13 downbeat minutes, before Young confesses “All I’ve got is a broken heart, and I don’t try to hide it when I play my guitar”.

Young has said Toast is about the time in a relationship going bad where one or both people realise it’s over, described the sound as “murky and dark, but not in a bad way” and praised it as a “pinnacle” for Crazy Horse, “the greatest group I met”.

It won’t get the party started, but Toast adds to Young’s formidable legacy and deserves to be heard.