Neil Young - Comes A Time

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 36:59
Size: 84.7 MB
Styles: Album rock, Soft rock
Year: 1978/2009
Art: Front

[4:41] 1. Goin' Back
[3:04] 2. Comes A Time
[4:04] 3. Look Out For My Love
[2:38] 4. Lotta Love
[4:09] 5. Peace Of Mind
[3:08] 6. Human Highway
[4:52] 7. Already One
[3:07] 8. Field Of Opportunity
[3:08] 9. Motorcycle Mama
[4:04] 10. Four Strong Winds

When Comes a Time arrived in record stores in October 1978, it was anticipated as Neil Young's return to the mellower, more commercially palatable folk-country-pop sound of his 1972 mega-smash Harvest. It was equally and eagerly hyped as such by the record company's marketing and promotions team, which no doubt was waiting for such a return. Judged purely on those standards, Comes a Time was regarded as an overwhelming success at the time, with immediate sales far out-distancing less radio-friendly predecessors like On the Beach and Tonight's the Night, which comprised two-thirds of his "Ditch Trilogy." Comes a Time also yielded Young's first mainstream radio hit in years with "Lotta Love," albeit not under his name. Backing vocalist Nicolette Larson scored a surprise Top 10 hit with a slickly produced cover of the tune, which Young referred to as his "Fleetwood Mac song."

Although time has since regarded the album with less critical acclaim than such initially misunderstood classics as Tonight's the Night, Comes a Time easily and quickly became Young's biggest seller since Harvest. The songs, all originals save for a beautiful cover of Ian and Sylvia Tyson's "Four Strong Winds," continue to hold up remarkably well. Larson's backup vocals on songs like "Lotta Love" and "Look Out for My Love" (backed by a much smoother, less ragged-sounding Crazy Horse) are a particular standout, prompting Young sideman Ben Keith to call the late vocalist "the greatest harmony singer I've ever heard." While smooth pop and romantic lyrical themes mostly fill Comes a Time, fans who favor Young's rustier side are tossed some rougher edges. "Motorcycle Mama," a raunchy ode to California biker babes, sticks out as being somewhat out of place on an album that otherwise basks in the warm and fuzzy glow of '70s folk-pop. The other notable thematic departure is "Already Gone," where Young pays tribute to his son.

Comes a Time was originally conceived as a solo acoustic project. When Young first presented the album -- originally recorded at Miami's Triad Studios without any backing musicians -- to label executives, they politely suggested he re-cut the tracks with a band. In a move that broke with his notorious artistic stubbornness, Young actually agreed.

Comes A Time mc
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Neil Young & Promise Of The Real - The Visitor

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 51:14
Size: 117.3 MB
Styles: Rock
Year: 2017
Art: Front

[ 5:47] 1. Already Great
[ 2:36] 2. Fly By Night Deal
[ 4:50] 3. Almost Always
[ 5:13] 4. Stand Tall
[ 5:54] 5. Change Of Heart
[ 8:21] 6. Carnival
[ 2:33] 7. Diggin' A Hole
[ 3:24] 8. Children Of Destiny
[ 1:59] 9. When Bad Got Good
[10:32] 10. Forever

Neil Young's latest LP with heartland-rock band Promise of the Real opens with "Already Great," where the guitars cut like rusty plows and anti-Trump invective becomes bitter tribute: "You're the promise land/The helping hand/No wall. No hate. No fascist U.S.A." That sense of cranky rage and ageless idealism are all over The Visitor. On the somber folk shuffle "Almost Always," he complains about "livin' with a game show host," while the forcefully hard-grooving "Fly By Night Deal" is sung (partly) in the voice of a pipeline foreman bringing wreckage to the wilderness. Young detours into blues on "Diggin' a Whole" and absurdist eccentricity on the eight-minute "Carnival," spinning a surreal circus allegory over a south-of-the-border saunter. Even weirder is "Children of Destiny," a ragefully didactic sing-along recorded with a 56-piece orchestra that sounds like a grunge anthem lost in the soundtrack to a Disney musical. But the album ends on well-worn ground with the folk prayer "Forever," the kind of song he's been writing for decades, stretching into 10 minutes of frayed hope for his fellow man. "Earth is like a church without a preacher/The people have to pray for themselves," he sings, true to a messy vision of democracy that remains as endearing as ever.

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The Visitor zippy

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Neil Young - Everybody's Rockin'

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 24:54
Size: 57.0 MB
Styles: Album rock
Year: 1983
Art: Front

[3:02] 1. Betty Lou's Got A New Pair Of Shoes
[2:12] 2. Rainin' In My Heart
[3:09] 3. Payola Blues
[2:59] 4. Wonderin'
[1:51] 5. Kinda Fonda Wanda
[1:58] 6. Jellyroll Man
[2:17] 7. Bright Lights, Big City
[2:39] 8. Cry, Cry, Cry
[2:46] 9. Mystery Train
[1:56] 10. Everybody's Rockin'

By following the hi-tech Trans after only seven months with a rockabilly album, Neil Young baffled his audience. Just as he had followed the sales peak of Harvest in 1972 with a series of challenging, uncommercial albums, Young had now dissipated the commercial and critical acceptance he had enjoyed with 1979's Rust Never Sleeps with a series of mediocre albums and inexplicable genre exercises. Everybody's Rockin', credited to "Neil & the Shocking Pinks," represented the nadir of this attempted career suicide. Running less than 25 minutes, it found Young covering early rock evergreens like "Betty Lou's Got a New Pair of Shoes" and writing a few songs in the same vein ("Kinda Fonda Wanda"). If he had presented this as a mini-album at a discount price, it would have been easier to enjoy the joke Young seemed to intend. As it was, fans who already had their doubts about Young dropped off the radar screen; Everybody's Rockin' was his lowest-charting album since his 1969 solo debut, and he didn't release another album for two years (his longest break ever between records). ~William Ruhlmann

Everybody's Rockin'

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Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Deja Vu

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 35:57
Size: 82.3 MB
Styles: Rock
Year: 1970/1995/2005
Art: Front

[4:24] 1. Carry On
[2:52] 2. Teach Your Children
[4:27] 3. Almost Cut My Hair
[3:35] 4. Helpless
[3:52] 5. Woodstock
[4:10] 6. Deja Vu
[2:59] 7. Our House
[2:05] 8. 4 + 20
[5:09] 9. Country Girl A. Whiskey Boot Hill. B. Down, Down, Down. C. Country Girl [i Think You're Pretty]
[2:20] 10. Everybody I Love You

One of the most hotly awaited second albums in history -- right up there with those by the Beatles and the Band -- Déjà Vu lived up to its expectations and rose to number one on the charts. Those achievements are all the more astonishing given the fact that the group barely held together through the estimated 800 hours it took to record Déjà Vu and scarcely functioned as a group for most of that time. Déjà Vu worked as an album, a product of four potent musical talents who were all ascending to the top of their game coupled with some very skilled production, engineering, and editing. There were also some obvious virtues in evidence -- the addition of Neil Young to the Crosby, Stills & Nash lineup added to the level of virtuosity, with Young and Stephen Stills rising to new levels of complexity and volume on their guitars. Young's presence also ratcheted up the range of available voices one notch and added a uniquely idiosyncratic songwriter to the fold, though most of Young's contributions in this area were confined to the second side of the LP. Most of the music, apart from the quartet's version of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock," was done as individual sessions by each of the members when they turned up (which was seldom together), contributing whatever was needed that could be agreed upon. "Carry On" worked as the album's opener when Stills "sacrificed" another copyright, "Questions," which comprised the second half of the track and made it more substantial. "Woodstock" and "Carry On" represented the group as a whole, while the rest of the record was a showcase for the individual members. David Crosby's "Almost Cut My Hair" was a piece of high-energy hippie-era paranoia not too far removed in subject from the Byrds' "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man," only angrier in mood and texture (especially amid the pumping organ and slashing guitars); the title track, also by Crosby, took 100 hours to work out and was a better-received successor to such experimental works as "Mind Gardens," out of his earlier career with the Byrds, showing his occasional abandonment of a rock beat, or any fixed rhythm at all, in favor of washing over the listener with tones and moods. "Teach Your Children," the major hit off the album, was a reflection of the hippie-era idealism that still filled Graham Nash's life, while "Our House" was his stylistic paean to the late-era Beatles and "4+20" was a gorgeous Stephen Stills blues excursion that was a precursor to the material he would explore on the solo album that followed. And then there were Neil Young's pieces, the exquisitely harmonized "Helpless" (which took many hours to get to the slow version finally used) and the roaring country-ish rockers that ended side two, which underwent a lot of tinkering by Young -- even his seeming throwaway finale, "Everybody I Love You," was a bone thrown to longtime fans as perhaps the greatest Buffalo Springfield song that they didn't record. All of this variety made Déjà Vu a rich musical banquet for the most serious and personal listeners, while mass audiences reveled in the glorious harmonies and the thundering electric guitars, which were presented in even more dramatic and expansive fashion on the tour that followed. ~Bruce Eder

Deja Vu

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