Neil Young’s Before And After is a natural extension of his abbreviated West Coast solo tour of July of 2023. During that jaunt, his first string of live shows since the pandemic lockdowns, he played less familiar material than what might most please his audiences. This recording is likewise comprised of similarly overlooked entries from the man’s estimable canon of work, one dating back over a half-century.
What’s equally novel about this collection, if not more so, is that the thirteen selections play uninterrupted for their roughly forty-eight-minute duration. Including “Burned” and “Mr. Soul” from the Buffalo Springfield days, hearing this collection is akin to perusing a photo scrapbook or eavesdropping on a daydream: the cumulative impact is moving in a variety of ways.
Before and After is essentially a solo album too. The erstwhile collaborator of Crosby, Stills & Nash sings while playing guitars, piano, pump organ, and harmonicas. Musician/technician Bob Rice also plays vibraphone for “My Heart” and second piano for “When I Hold You In My Arms,” a cull from Are You Passionate?, Young’s collaboration with Booker T. & the M.Gs.
Notably, the latter number was co-written with Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro, the now-retired linchpin of the middle-period Crazy Horse era beginning with ’75’s Zuma. The song resides comfortably amidst a range of numbers featuring “I’m The Ocean,” from the ’95 Mirror Ball project with Pearl Jam, thereby reaffirming a theme that’s emerged from Young’s most recent output of both original and archival material: he’s coming to terms with and making peace with his past.
The introspective rapprochement of “Birds,” from the halcyon Seventies era of After The Gold Rush, is only one of the most overt gestures to that effect. As is the title song from 1978’s Comes A Time, highlighted to a great degree by the late Nicolette Larson’s harmony vocals; intimations of mortality are only a little less obvious here than on the aforementioned cut.
With no small amount of equanimity, Young also brings such potentially foreboding feelings more to the fore on “A Dream That Can Last,” the second of two culls from the Nineties homage to the late Kurt Cobain, Sleeps With Angels. Still, Neil spends more time celebrating his longevity in a cut like the outtake from Archives II: 1972-1976, “Homefires.”
Along the same lines, even though this endlessly inscrutable man doesn’t exactly exult during “On The Way Home,” he does revel in his unassuming fashion. And, in juxtaposition with one of the highlights of Springfield’s sophomore effort Again, “Mr. Soul,” “Mother Earth” expands the author’s worldview beyond just himself: what was an afterthought (and non-sequitur?) at the very end of the magnificent NY/CH collaboration Ragged Glory, here becomes a quietly emphatic restatement of environmental concern.
Accordingly, humility prevails in Before And After especially as it radiates through the ease of Young’s vocal delivery. The weathered quality his voice has acquired over the years only adds to the emotional authenticity, as does the simplicity of his harmonica playing and the vigorous strumming of acoustic guitar.
Conceived by Young and music producer/entrepreneur Lou Adler (and dedicated to long-time manager Elliot Roberts who passed in 2019), Before And After’s mixing was handled by Neil and frequent audio partner Niko Bolas. The self-described ‘The Volume Dealers’ render the sound as intimate as the emotions expressed in the material.
Based on its purposeful choice of material plus the arrangements that hearken to his earliest solo style, Before And After certainly isn’t without precedent in the Canadian rock icon’s discography. Still, it’s no coincidence the end effect of hearing this LP is much like that of that which arises from Hitchhiker, recorded in a single 1976 session, then issued in 2017; both efforts are as thought-provoking as any that have distinguished Neil Young’s fifty-plus year career.
