His new album "Psychedelic Pill" is a real tour de force. At 66 years years old he shows no sign of giving up on his journey of personal truth and when plenty more throw in the towel to popular trends Young stubbornly avoids them and sticks it to the listener.
Just the opening track alone coming in at a gob smacking 27.36 minutes tells you there's going to be no compromise here, and also immediately ruling out anyone with attention span of a small child, which takes out one large lump of a modern audience immediately. And radio play? forget it at this length.
Taken from the track “Walk Like a Giant” he sings “I used to walk like a giant on the land/Now I feel like a leaf floating in a stream,” and which Young then goes on to set the verse against the first guitar break of such apocalyptic sound it could be Hurricane Sandy itself. The track full playing time is around 15 minutes. Yes indeed, Neil Young is most definitely sticking it to the listener.
As excellently described by David Hens at Examiner.com
"I expect some listeners to complain about the meandering guitar solos that don’t deliver an instantaneous payoff and others to claim that Young is clinging to a lost era, but what else is new?
Immediate gratification has corrupted society’s thinking to such a degree that people dismiss things if they don’t grasp all concepts within the first 30 seconds of the experience."
Here's the shortened radio edit of “Walk Like a Giant”... well OK, some compromise was taken to get this heard but I doubt whether Young was particularly bothered or involved. He'd made his statement.
This records impact may not be realised for some time to come.
