Neil Young brings back Ragged Glory in live set
LOS ANGELES, April 23, (AP): The venerable Neil Young offers a ragged and raw live take of his beloved 1990 album “Ragged Glory” with a new album, titled “...’ Up.”
Of course, the 2024 version doesn’t have the same semi-youthful energy that the 44-year-old Young put into the original. Maybe his voice is a little shakier, the guitar solos not quite as refined, but the songs still crackle with a power that’s frankly stunning coming from the not-soyoung Young.
It’s clear that the 78-year-old and his band Crazy Horse fed off the small crowd at the Toronto club where this was recorded in November 2023. Young is obviously having a blast on stage, so much so that he decided to release the songs just months after the performance. This is from a guy who has held on to some of his most beloved live shows for half a century.
Young and Crazy Horse perform nine of the 10 “Ragged Glory” songs in nearly identical arrangements to how they were recorded back in 1990.
Original
Only one song from the original release, “Mother Earth (Natural Anthem),” is absent on ”...’ Up.” The songs have all been retitled with lyrics from the original, except for the cover of “Farmer John.”
For example, “Over and Over” becomes “Broken Circle” and “Love to Burn” becomes “Valley of Hearts.”
The somewhat profane album title is more or less the same as a song from “Ragged Glory,” just with a couple of different characters in between the “f” and the “in.”
For all of its virtues, some fans of the original may quibble with Young tackling the material 34 years later, especially since he doesn’t differ much from the originals.
“Not everyone will want to hear it because it’s not for everyone,” Young writes in the liner notes. “In the spirit it’s offered, we made this for the Horse lovers. I can’t stop it. The Horse is runnin’ - what a ride we have. I don’t want to mess with the vibe, and I am so happy to have this to share.”
It may be for a niche Neil audience, but that niche is sure to love
it. And Young probably doesn’t care what the rest think. ❑ ❑ ❑
Jazz pianist Fred Hersch fully embraces the freedom that comes with improvisation on his solo album “Silent, Listening,” spontaneously composing and performing tunes that are often without melody, meter or form.
Listening to them can be challenging and rewarding. The many-time Grammy nominee ’s impressionistic approach creates colors that are subdued and lovely. It’s chamber jazz — closer to classical music than the blues — that will be familiar to fans of ECM Records founder Manfred
Eicher, who produced. The album will be released Friday.
Hersch returns to the Swiss studio where he recorded his first ECM album, “The Song Is You,” a 2022 set with trumpeter Enrico Rava. The sound is pristine and airy, in classic fashion for the label, and Hersch makes full use of his instrument.
He explores the highest and lowest octaves, and strums inside the piano. With a light touch and disdain for anything showy, he plays single notes in meticulous extended sequences. There are also clusters that splash, splay and sashay, and an occasional forte chord for startling contrast. Sometimes a tune emerges, such as near the end of the contemplative “The Wind,” and amid the unsteady but seductive pulse of “Starlight.”
Hersch’s hands converse with each other, the parts they play by turns contrasting or complementary. Rumbling bass is answered by treble toggles and trills. The animated “Little Song” swings with bouncy good cheer, but the mood on Hersch’s other original compositions tends toward the wistful, ethereal or — as he describes it — nocturnal.
The amorphous, atonal music contrasts with his lyrical style on covers. The Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn tune “Star-Crossed Lovers” becomes a gentle wee-hours examination of melancholy melody. Hersch interprets “Softly, as In a Morning Sunrise” as a hummable, jaunty toe-tapper, and he saves for last his bluest performance, “Winter of My Discontent,” which achieves a glow that lingers.