Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Neil Young 16: Re-ac-tor

Nobody outside his immediate circle knew it, but music wasn’t at the forefront of Neil’s mind in the early ‘80s. He and his wife were busy trying to raise a non-communicative palsy-stricken child. The desperation they felt on a daily basis was reflected in the odd albums that surfaced periodically.

Re-ac-tor has a lot going for it; Crazy Horse, for one. It’s a rock album all the way through, but for the most part it just doesn’t do anything. “Opera Star” uses the F-word for the first time on a Neil album. “Surfer Joe And Moe The Sleaze” apparently about two label executives. But “T-Bone” is an awfully nasty trick. It’s the same riff over and over, with the same seven words repeated on top of it for nine minutes. What’s worse, the track starts mid-progress, so you know they’d been playing it a while. “Get Back On It” has a piano, which breaks up the monotony a bit. That’s the first side.

“Southern Pacific” offers a little more variety, and as a train song, would work slightly better a few years down the road in the Farm Aid format. “Motor City” sounds too much like everything else to stand out. “Rapid Transit” uses a cool riff and stammering effects so we remember it. “Shots” is probably the best tune here, a complete assault that is the polar opposite to the acoustic version first heard in the Rust Never Sleeps era.

Another one of the “Missing 6”, Re-ac-tor was allowed to get dusty before finally appearing on CD in the new century. It didn’t help.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse Re-ac-tor (1981)—

1 comment:

  1. It's an obvious tossed off contractual obligation. But it's a FUN tossed off contractual obligation. Neil had set a high standard, so anything looser at this point was bound to get lousy reviews.
    While it certainly doesn't have close to the depth of songwriting that "Rust Never Sleeps" has, it still has the SOUND and the NOISE of Crazy Horse, which keeps it from being boring.

    "Opera Star" was the single, and it's fun, even if it has the same lyrical plot as ELO's "Rockaria". "T-Bone" captures the perfectly the existential frustration of not having a protein served with a starch at dinner. Ok, it doesn't. But it's so brilliant in it's utter dumbness that the 10 minutes don't get dull. "Shots" is like nightmarish movie for the mind, atypical of the album. The rest are a bunch of really entertaining tracks. Fortunately, the limitations of vinyl kept the album from wearing out its welcome. Certainly, not the first place to start with Neil, but nice enough if you're just looking for a good time from his music.

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