#309 The Best Album of 1989, Round 1 Match #63: Neil Young vs. Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Panaiotis
Hey folks!
Today’s Best Album of 1989 match is:
#22 Neil Young, FREEDOM
vs.
#107 Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Panaiotis, DEEP LISTENING
To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.
We have one Designated Cheerleader today, it’s from, you guessed it, Frank Stallone Head Cheerleader @bsglaser.bsky.social and it’s for FREEDOM! Take it away, Brian!
Neil Young is such an established part of the rock-era firmament that it's easy to forget how, by 1989, he was essentially down for the count. It had been a full decade since he'd released a great album (RUST NEVER SLEEPS in 1979), and he'd spent pretty much the full span of the 80s ginning up a run of turkeys.
It's actually hard to overstate how many ways Shakey flopped during the Reagan years. Aside from genre experiments that didn't really land (the rockabilly moves of EVERYBODY'S ROCKIN' in 83; two different synth/electronic experiments with TRANS in 82 and LANDING ON WATER in 86), he couldn't even make his core competencies pan out: RE-AC-TOR in 81 and LIFE in 87 are probably his weakest Crazy Horse-backed albums, and the country-folk OLD WAYS in 85 doesn't quite work. There was a mild sign of life in 88 with THIS NOTE'S FOR YOU--Neil's songwriting, energy, and focus seemed to be back on tap, but he applied them to a horn-backed blues/R&B style that still wasn't an entirely comfortable fit.
Robert Christgau probably has the most succinct reaction to FREEDOM's release in 89: "So apropos of nothing he comes up with a classic Neil Young album, deploying not only the folk ditties and rock galumph that made him famous, but the Nashvillisms and horn charts that made him infamous." Unlike the other Boomer lifers who put out records the same year (Sir Paul, Elvis the C, the Stones, etc.), FREEDOM is a key entry in the Neil Young canon--I think it deserves consideration for any serious Top Neil Young Albums list. Across a dozen tracks and an hour of music, Neil delivers the goods in a variety of styles, with songwriting and performances that match or exceed the 60s and 70s work that made him famous.
It starts right with the opening track, "Rockin' in the Free World." This is a live, acoustic take of a song that has become an anthem with arguably longer legs than even "Ohio" or "Hey Hey My My"; and like that latter tune, it bookends the album with a roaring electric version at the other end. It's a rousing and moving song that was addressing the politics of the time, but with imagery and energy that have continued to be a match for any era since.
(Let's take a quick moment to mention Neil's performance of "Rockin' in the Free World" on SNL in Sept. 89. If you've never seen it, go find it on YouTube right now. It's easily one of the best musical breaks in the history of the show, and it's all the evidence anyone needed that Neil was very much back to form.)
In between the 2 versions of "Rockin' in the Free World," Neil dives into nearly every style in his toolkit and makes them work. "Crime in the City" is a leftover from his THIS NOTE'S FOR YOU notebook, and even has horns, but it's both a wider approach and more focused than anything on that previous record. (Crazy Horse tears through this song on the WELD live album.) Speaking of leftovers, lots of these songs had been around for a while and had been played live--"Too Far Gone" and "The Ways of Love" are from the 70s, and "Eldorado," "Someday," "Wrecking Ball," and "Hangin' on a Limb" got second chances in the FREEDOM sessions. "Wrecking Ball," in particular, might be Neil's loveliest song, both in the sense that it's beautiful music and is a wonderful love song. (Emmylou Harris' cover from later this same year is worth a listen, too). But it doesn't sound like an odds-and-sods comp from across decades; everything feels fresh and alive. Playing it again ahead of the tournament, the album still moved at a brisk pace and hit all the right emotional buttons.
Track after track, song after song, FREEDOM brings noisy guitar, delicate piano, straight-ahead delivery, and unusual arrangements. And this wasn't just a one-off after a decade of drifting--FREEDOM acts as a hard-reset pivot point in the Shakey discography, followed by RAGGED GLORY, HARVEST MOON, and SLEEPS WITH ANGELS. From there, his records are hit and miss, but not the back-to-back misses and unfocused torpor of the 80s stuff. FREEDOM showed that Neil still had fuel to burn and roads to drive, and he's been barreling forward ever since.
Knockin’ it out the park again, Brian! Thank you!
Click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.
Yesterday, #75 Nomeansno, WRONG defeated #54 The Pogues, PEACE AND LOVE, 82-61-2.
Thanks for voting (Nomeansno through),
Kent