Though Neil Young experienced a renaissance of sorts in the late ’80s when albums such as This Note’s For You and Freedom delivered singles that made their way onto MTV, his recorded output since that time has been decidedly spotty. For every Mirror Ball (his fantastic collaboration with Pearl Jam), there’s been a Greendale (a concept album about the murder of a police officer in a small California town). While Fork in the Road (due out Tuesday, April 7) isn’t an across-the-board dud, it certainly isn’t his best work.

“Cough up the Bucks,” the first single, finds the grizzled vet taking aim at bankers and politicians. “When Worlds Collide” features some gritty guitar work but never really amounts to anything. “Fuel Line” and “Hit the Road” rattle and shake like Tom Waits’ tunes but the lyrics (the songs are explicitly about the energy crisis) are just too heavy-handed. The talking blues of the title track is a little more tolerable perhaps because it’s not so heavy-handed. “There’s a fork in the road/and I’m not sure which way I’m gonna turn,” Young sings. “Just singing a Song” also has a majestic quality as Young assembles a good group of backing vocalists to sing the refrain, giving the tune a choral feel. But this album, a diatribe about stimulus packages and economic packages, feels like a “fork in the road” for the aging singer. Sure, it has an immediacy to it but it’s not the type of thing you’ll want to listen to ten years down the road.

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Tags: diatribe, energy crisis, Neil Young, pearl jam

This entry was posted by Jeff Niesel on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.