Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Return To Greendale WARNERS
Fan-polarising album recorded live in 2003, also as deluxe box set with documentary.
This considerably weighty set has attained near-mythical status among Neil Young fans. Some love it, some hate it. Not sure why anyone would want to do the latter; the subject matter may deviate a little from the usual Young template, but the songs all carry the same clout and passion you’d expect.
Greendale was a highly ambitious project: originally a studio album recorded with Crazy Horse, a tour, a film, a book and a graphic novel from DC Comics imprint Vertigo, conceptualised to recount the story of the Green family, who for generations have lived in the fictional California seaside town of Greendale. In this, Young takes on the role of a sonic narrative storyteller such as Bruce Springsteen or Tom Waits, detailing the minutiae and travails of life in small-town America – greed, brutality, corruption and environmental disaster all take their part in a highly moral audiovisual soundscape.
Return To Greendale is part of Young’s ever-sprawling Performance Series, with the 10-song set reissued as a two-CD/ two-LP live album recorded in Toronto on the supporting 2003 tour, and a deluxe box set that includes the music plus a concert film and a making-of documentary Inside Greendale.
There’s a theory that the more cultures interact, the more their values, ideologies and customs will start to reflect each other. And that’s what Return To Greendale and Greendale are concerned with. Both the 2003 album, and its accompanying year-long tour featuring dozens of actors to help enact the scenarios, are heartfelt howls of protest against culture convergence and the homogenisation of society in the face of capitalist greed. It’s a little naïve in its presentation and denotations of homely American stereotypes, perhaps, but all the more powerful for that.
The connotations that can be drawn from the power and fury of the music surrounding Young’s observational vignettes are striking indeed. You can feel the helplessness and anger of the protagonists, shaking as the saga unfolds.
It’s an oddly affecting experience hearing Young detail his environmental concerns in 2020, when global warming and covid and Trump (who Young is limbering up to sue) are threatening to bring down the world entirely. Crazy Horse are in fine fettle, melodic and disharmonious on the opening scenesetter Falling From Above, heavier than heaven when occasion demands it (Leave The Driving) and always sweetly on-song. ■■■■■■■■■■