The release of Neil Young’s Oceanside Countryside, following the oft-delayed public unveiling of Homegrown in 2020 and Chrome Dreams three years later, effectively completes a mirror image of the ‘Ditch Trilogy’ from the early Seventies.
Unlike Time Fades Away, On The Beach, and Tonight’s The Night, however, all issued in sequence after 1972’s Harvest, the three later albums were never issued upon completion. Instead, tracks from each were issued on some subsequent albums, so the diminution of their impact arguably continues on Oceanside Countryside, for similar reasons of replication.
Nevertheless, this great ‘lost’ album, like its companion pieces, accurately captures a moment in history for the co-founder of Buffalo Springfield. Immediately preceding Comes A Time, the songs’ generally positive mindset is far removed from the bitterness and disillusionment that radiate from the trio of titles issued earlier in the same decade.
Cuts like “Sail Away” and “Lost In Space” radiate an air of contentment. But sans the lush orchestration that evoked such a maudlin air on the 1978 LP above, these tracks are instead rendered in a country/folk style that echoes the acoustic/electric dichotomy Young outlined for himself early in the Seventies circa After The Gold Rush (albeit without that watershed record’s scintillating resonance).
Alongside Neil’s singing and his playing on acoustic guitar, piano and harmonica, the foursome of Ben Keith on steel Guitar and dobro, Rufus Thibodeaux on fiddle, Joe Osborne on bass and Karl T. Himmel on drums provides sturdy if unspectacular support. Nevertheless, this sympathetic complement of accompanists exhibit an uncanny ability to follow Young’s loose and unpredictable turns of phrase in writing, playing and singing.
Material such as “The Old Homestead”—on which the rhythm section is actually Tim Drummond (Bob Dylan) on bass and Levon Helm (The Band) on drums—gains intimacy via Chris Bellman’s customarily astute audio mastering. In addition, the latter’s technical expertise renders vivid the camaraderie among the participating musicians.
All that said, Oceanside Countryside may or may not hold broad appeal for anyone other than the most fervent Neil Young aficionados. After all, in slightly modified form, the album appears in the Archives III box set released last year, and, true to Young’s often-enervating pattern(s) of behavior, this collection does not follow the same track sequence as compact disc six of Archives Vol. III.
Specifically, this vinyl (and subsequent CD) release of Oceanside Countryside includes a half-dozen cuts on the disc of the same name in the larger compendium. But according to Neil himself, this latest tracklist is comprised of the original mixes done at the time of recording, one more instance of how, when it comes to this man’s extensive discography, the concept of ‘definitive’ has undoubtedly become fluid..
Consequently, this entry in the Analog Original Series (AOS) can be the latest delight of Neil Young fans or the bane of completists (or both). Yet it stands to reason that more casual music-loving collectors may not care a whit whether one version of this album contains a track with different vocal harmonies,like “Dance Dance Dance,” among others.
In the end, the inveterate iconoclast’s front cover portrait for Oceanside Countryside accurately reflects the LP’s artful combination of style and effect. The photo posits the one-time comrade of Crosby, Stills & Nash as the quintessential cosmic cowboy, right down to the ever-so-slight slight smile below his hat and sunglasses.
That bare wisp of a grin may ultimately be the key to hearing this Oceanside Countryside on its terms. The album is less of an example of the obsessive in Neil Young–tendencies that go back to the re-release of his eponymous solo debut–and more of an expression of the ingenuous pride the man has developed in his work over the course of his sixty-plus year career.
