Neil Young & Crazy Horse renewed their musical bond during a handful of impromptu shows in 2018 and then repaired to the Rocky Mountains to make Colorado. It is a similarly spontaneous affair, one that is perhaps too informal for its own good at certain points, but one that nevertheless captures the potent chemistry between these seasoned musicians.
The personnel here is the same that played those dates last year. In addition to the longstanding rhythm section of drummer Ralph Molina and bassist Billy Talbot, Nils Lofgren rounds out the quartet to reaffirm his own long-term history with the Canadian rock icon: he played on After The Gold Rush, Tonight’s The Night and the tour in support of Trans. More importantly, though, this multi-instrumentalist/vocalist adds a crucial element of versatility to the proceedings that allowed the quartet to record mostly live in the studio.
“Think of Me” commences Colorado in a somewhat melancholy remembrance buoyed with harmonica and piano. That folksy, off-the-cuff opening leads in very short order leads to the high-volume thirteen minutes of “She Showed Me Love” and while there’s no denying the impact of lyrics that evolve in a stream-of-consciousness that dovetails with the instrumental cacophony, another extended number like this would add ballast and balance to the forty-minutes plus album (there is one side open for extra music in place of a graphic etching on the double vinyl configuration).
The title track evolves in similarly entrancing fashion, albeit in a shorter time span. The metronomic bass and drums of Talbot and Molina reinforce the mantra-like intonation of vocal harmonies that float above the jagged electric guitars of Young and Lofgren. Neil and the Horse proceed at the same deliberate pace during “Olden Days,” but the tempo highlights a tuneful quality as much as its four-minute duration; having been an integral part of the eponymous Crazy Horse debut in 1971(with Jack Nietzsche and the late Danny Whitten), Lofgren knows how help maintain the force in such musicianship, even when it barely hangs together.
More knotty fretboard work, including plenty of those recognizable staccato leads, comprise the bulk of the similarly-truncated “Help Me Lose My Mind.” A seemingly random spray of cryptic thoughts echo the name of that number, while, in contrast, the pointed topicality of “Shut It Down” is unmistakable amid the din. Underlying themes of current events also run through “Rainbow of Colors,” a more overt but nonetheless artful expression of social-consciousness that flashes in and out of Colorado.
But as with Young’s last solo album, Peace Trail, the Canadian rock icon’s creating characters-in-song to enact a narrative, a concept he utilizes in a more personal context on “Milky Way.” There the plodding gait allows him time to use his guitar to complete the picture he sketches with the words. “Eternity” is something else again, where the piano, as clearly as Young’s falsetto vocal, directly hearkens to bittersweet ballads of his past discography, although in a more lighthearted fashion than say, “Journey Through The Past.”
Evidence of the easygoing camaraderie between Neil Young and Crazy Horse, it’s hard not to imagine grins on the faces of these men as they repeat the ‘clickety-clack’ chorus. But it’s a decided solemnity that permeates the acoustic-guitar based expression of devotion appropriately-titled “I Do;” in placing this comparatively quiet five minutes as the closing of Colorado, Neil Young finishes saying all that needs to be said about the abiding connections in his life, not the least of which is the one he maintains so fruitfully with Crazy Horse.
