Landing on Water [Import]

Neil Young | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 19, 1996)
• Original Release Date: 1986
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Ume Imports
• ASIN: B000000OY9
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #160,868 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Landing on Water may not be Neil Young's worst album, but it's probably the least noteworthy collection he's assembled. For what turned out to be his penultimate Geffen album, Young rebuffed his regular set of co-producers in favor of West Coast journeyman Danny Kortchmar--seemingly in the interest of honing a more radio-friendly sound. As a result, the singer finds himself bobbing his way through layers of synthesizer fills and Steve Jordan's strident drumming; the whole thing feels like a bland '80s rock soundtrack. None of these songs have even become concert salvage projects--evidence that their composer doesn't hold them in high regard. The one standout here is "Hippie Dream," a scathing death-of-the-counterculture screed inspired by David Crosby's then-life-threatening drug problems: "Another flower child goes to seed / In an ether-filled room of meat hooks / It's so ugly" Young wails, and one can't help but wish the music had half as much bite as the lyrics. --Steven Stolder

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars too many bad reviews..., October 20, 2002

By 

James Porter "beinfang" (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Landing on Water (Audio CD)

How can you not like this album? This is experimental Neil at his best, trying to tackle something new and infuse it with his own Neilness.

So, you think of the 80s, and you think of synthesizers. New Wave? Synth pop?

Neil puts together this album that is largely synthesizer-driven. Actually, that's not true. This album is primarily driven by Steve Jordan's drums, mic'd in such a way that it sounds like you're in a closet with them. Keyboards are layered on top of the drums, and last... BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST... Neil's trademark tortured distorted guitar periodically cuts through and slaps you senseless.

This album has a LOT of charm to it.

Lyrically:
"Take my advice, don't listen to me..."
"The wooden ships were just a hippie dream..."
An angelic-voiced boys choir singing "Got to fight to control the violent side..."

Samples & sound effects:
Breaking glass as percussion.
Screams punctuating that song "Pressure".
...and DAMN I don't know what they did to those drums throughout the album to make 'em sound so in-your-face, but... DAMN...

DAMN.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Trans with the bugs out, March 23, 2000

By 

Johnny Bacardi (Horse Cave, KY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Landing on Water (Audio CD)

You know, it blows my mind that such seminal Young albums such as On The Beach and Time Fades Away are unavailable while the likes of Old Ways and this are still out there...

But don't get me wrong, I really do like this album. In fact, I like it a lot; I think it's the best thing Neil did during his "difficult" years on Geffen. When I first heard LoW, I hated it. Flat out hated it. I was still jonesing for the Neil Young of the Seventies and this certainly did not fit the bill. But y'know, the songs themselves were so strong that I eventually began to play it more and more, beginning with Hippie Dream, one of Neil's best in any decade, on through the shuffling People on the Street, Touch The Night with its choirish BV's, I Got A Problem (rocking and funky, with great guitar), and even the Devo-ish Pressure. This album comes across in a lot of ways like an attempt to revisit Trans, and in my opinion LoW works much better. After my initial reservations, I came to like Young's enhanced electric guitar and Steve Jordan's flat-sounding electronic drums (I mean sometimes they sound like a flat rubber stick on a wood block!) As the years have gone by, I still play Zuma or On The Beach or Tonight's The Night when I get in the mood for some Neil, but once in a while, when I least expect it, I get an urge to pull this one out and give it a spin. I always enjoy it, and I think you will, too, with an open mind.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hard Luck Story, February 24, 2006

By 

Gianmarco Manzione (Tampa, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Landing on Water (Audio CD)

Of all the 60s legends who took baffling artistic detours through the decade Kris Kristofferson described as "shipwrecked"--Dylan and the Stones come especially to mind--Neil Young's was by far the most fascinating. After responding to the epic success of the "Rust" albums with characteristically unpredictable forays into inaccessible pseudo-punk (Reactor) and rickety folk meanderings (Hawks & Doves), Neil Young journeyed to places few of his fans were willing to go: the electronica dance beats of "Trans" which, we later learned, featured electronically distorted vocals that emerged from attempts at communicating through a computer with his son Ben, a quadriplegic suffering from cerebral palsy.

In retrospect, the 80s are as legendary a period in Neil Young's career as his 70s heyday--not because the music was great, but precisely because it wasn't, culminating in the now-infamous lawsuit filed against Young by David Geffen for making music that didn't sound Neil young enough. Many like to call "Landing on Water" Neil's worst album, but that distinction--if we really must make it--belongs to the morbidly produced "Everybody's Rockin'". While Springsteen and Joel seemed to discover new voices with 50s nostalgia pieces like "Pink Cadillac" and "Uptown Girl" around the same time, Neil's flirtation with similar curiosities reflected, if anything, a voice that had become all but irretrievable.

It could hardly have been a surprise, then, that "Landing on Water" further exemplified the erratic artistic indulgences Young was favoring at the time, with its characteristically grungy licks and riffs laid over a jarring and misguided cacophony of synthesized drums and rhythms. It isn't just that the album sounds dated in 2006; the production is so insular that it was destined to sound dated before the year of its release came to a close. And yet, despite all this, "Landing on Water" contains three essential performances that die-hard and open-minded fans will learn to appreciate. "Hippie Dream"--with its moving eulogy for the bygone days of flower power--is a biting appraisal of an era he helped define, while "Drifter" and "Touch the Night" showcase a Neil Young who almost finds his groove amid the album's synth-laden idiosyncrasies.

These songs are treasures of an artistic vision stretching to fathom the boundaries of its expression, and the ambition of the material it produced at that time is, to my ears, every bit as beautiful as Young's best work. It may not always have sounded great--indeed, it usually strained just to sound listenable. But Neil's refusal to look away from less familiar artistic cravings is exactly the kind of edginess his reputation is founded on, and it is the good fan who understands glories like "Sleeps With Angels", "Freedom" and "Ragged Glory" could not have been possible without the misadventures that preceded them.

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