Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Don't write this one off too quickly, November 25, 1998
I want to say a word or two in defense of this album, which people seem to be describing as some sort of throwaway. Not true. The instrumentals on "Broken Arrow" are as inspired as any Neil Young and Crazy Horse have dished out, and the musical accompaniments to "Loose Change" and "Slips Away" in particular are downright hypnotic in places. Yes, some of the songs are long -- is this a problem? When Neil wants to sprawl, he sprawls; he doesn't limit himself to turning out one neatly-wrapped radio cut after another, and that's one more reason to respect him. And when the songs extend on this album it's always to a mezmerizing rather than tedious effect. I suppose we could have done without the cut "This Town," but so what? It's hard to think of a more inane tune than "There's a World," but that song hardly detracts from the glory of "Harvest." If there is a problem with "Broken Arrow," it seems to lie more with the production than with conception or performance. The vocals for many of the songs are strangely washed-out, as if Neil (and Crazy Horse too, for that matter) were standing a foot or so from the mike. This is disappointing, since the lyrics, though not his best, are generally pretty damn good. As for "Baby What You Want Me to Do?" it's live, it's uncharacteristic, it's lower than low-fi, but the obvious intent is to make you feel you're listening from the back of a crowded bar--an interesting idea, and I think it works pretty well. Finally, "Music Arcade" has got to be one of Neil's most perfect accoustic pieces ever, and it alone nearly justifies the price of the album.
|
|
|
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Glory of a Slow Turgid River, May 7, 2006
The term "grunge" has often been associated with Neil, and no one epitomizes the term better than him. Broken Arrow is rock at its slow, crawling, best. To understand why so many people virtually worship this guy's music, especially when he melds with Crazy Horse, you need to let yourself enter his music as if you were entering a dark and turgid river, and then just let it take you on a journey. If you try to analyze this album, you'll never figure it out.
Broken Arrow is all about deep longing, and struggling for some light in a dark world. The first three tracks on the album create a trance-like mood that can evoke a mystic state in the listener. There is a sense of the divine underlying the best music, from Beethoven, to Mahler to Robert Simpson. It's there in the jams of the Dead, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa and Eric Clapton in his heroin days. If you let yourself go into this album, you will sense the mystic as strongly as in other great Neil and Crazy Horse jams (Powderfinger, Cortez the Killer, Change Your Mind, Love and Only Love, Down by the River, Last Dance, etc.).
In "Big Time," every pluck of Neil's guitar is a quest for something beautiful that has been lost, or a dream that is fading-an recurring Neil Young image. About six minutes into the song there's a classic Neil Young and Crazy epiphany that explodes with beauty.
"Loose Change" starts out optimistically, but becomes is a quest for something that is never found. It's like a cry for the sun during a horribly dark and gloomy day and, no matter how powerful the cry, the sun never seems to break through. About half way through the song, it's as if Neil and Crazy Horse get stuck in the mud, and the river just goes round and round the same notes. I've read somewhere that this part of the song was a sort of an aural wake for David Briggs, a long time collaborator and friend of Neil's.
"Slip Away" makes me thing of the great jams of the seventies (I was only a kid then) that are missing in the instant-gratification I-Pod stuffing music of today. Almost symphonic in scale, it's long, abstract, and has moments of true profundity.
Some folks have criticized the rest of the songs as throwaways, but they're not. The dark river runs through each of them and, although they seem lighter and more tuneful, oddly transcendent images of old souls flying through darkness ("Scattered) and not being asleep when he's lying down ("This Town") abound.
The last song on the album, "Baby What You Want From Me", sounds like a bootleg recorded from the back of a small but noisy bar while Neil and Crazy Horse were playing. The band is distant and you hear a lot of the clatter of drinks clinking. There's one part where someone in the audience actually says, "Where's the door?" When listening to this song with my friends, we'd wait for that line to come. Somehow it fits in with the song and finishes the album with a strong sense of otherworldliness.
Broken Arrow is Neil and Crazy Horse at their slow, dark, turgid best. It's not for surface dwellers, but once you get caught up in its powerful undercurrents, you will never be able to leave.
Spiderant.
|
|
|
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An album for meditation and soul searching, August 24, 2006
This is actually my favorite Neil Young album (which may say something about me). I love it not for its quantity of great songs or tracks, but for its incredible depth and mystery. The image of American Indians on the cover and the title--a broken arrow, representing peace--indicates an appreciation of history and the fact that human thought and emotion over the ages is all tied together.
These ideas, of course, are recurring themes in Neil Young's work (overcoming generation gaps, imagining life in other times and places, and working through complex and difficult memories). It is music for lonely people, lost souls, or those searching for meaning in a dark world. At certain times, it is almost eerie, as though he is channeling spiritual messages.
Perhaps the final song, his version of "Baby What You Want Me to Do" could really be interpreted in a spiritual way. It could mean that his muse is a higher power that was telling him what to do when writing and performing the music (like the double-meaning of George Harrison's unintentional channeling of "My Sweet Lord...He's So Fine.") Young might have also chosen to do a cover of "Baby..." because the words of being in a state of flux and turmoil echo the lyrics of other tracks such as "Scattered (Let's Think About Livin')."
It is not an album to be listened to at a party or with commotion. Just as one wouldn't want to meditate or read under those circumstances, one probably shouldn't try to connect with this kind of music with distractions. As he says in "Music Arcade" : "Yeah, I'm talking 'bout getting down...Take it easy...There's no one around..."
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
Interact With Your Music: Discover, listen to, and buy new music, all from the pages of SPIN's digital edition, free to Amazon customers.
This item is part of our Music Deals Store, where you'll find extra savings on hundreds of CDs across all genres.
~ Neil Young & Crazy Horse
~ Crazy Horse
~ Neil Young & Crazy Horse
~ Neil Young
~ Neil Young & Crazy Horse
by Neil Young 
