Neil Young 31: Year Of The Horse

By the mid-‘90s grunge had subsided, but Neil was still relevant. He promptly took the Horse on the H.O.R.D.E. tour, playing mostly for kids who’d come to see Phish or Blues Traveler. He also let Jim Jarmusch follow them around with Super 8 cameras, resulting in a film called Year Of The Horse. The accompanying live album was not a “soundtrack”, since much of the music in the film was fragmented and even juxtaposed with older footage. Much like its predecessors, the songs on the CDs are long, loud, slow and sloppy, and that’s fine. There’s enough variety here to differentiate the album from (and improve on) Live Rust and Weld, but just touches the surface of the sheer breadth of songs they played that summer.

Disc one kicks off with a priceless exchange twixt Neil and the audience. A heckler shouts, “They all sound the same!” and our hero retorts, “It’s all one song!” And they all are—no problem. They crash right into “When You Dance I Can Really Love”, in just as good a rendition as on Live Rust. Zuma gets revisited here, with a negligible version of “Barstool Blues” and a strong, drawn-out “Danger Bird” that brings chills. An effective “When Your Lonely Heart Breaks” includes Poncho on the Stringman, followed by the acoustic blues rejig of “Mr. Soul”. “Pocahontas” goes electric psychedelic, and the first disc ends with a delicate “Human Highway”. The second disc features a few tunes from Broken Arrow, plus a nice and sloppy “Prisoners Of Rock ‘N Roll”. Interestingly, the club recordings sound sharper than some of the arena recordings.

Year Of The Horse is Neil’s best live collection of previously released songs, packaged (and some might say mixed) like a bootleg. At 85 minutes he wisely put these out on two discs for the price of one; after all, what could be left off a single-disc edit? However lost Neil may have been in the ‘80s, a decade later he was making up for lost time. And we were happy to have him.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse Year Of The Horse (1997)—4