Crazy Horse, Neil Young - Sleeps With Angels
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Crazy Horse, Neil YoungBrand: YOUNG,NEIL
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 1994-08-16
Music Label: Reprise Records
Soundtracks:
- My Heart
- Prime Of Life
- Driveby
- Sleeps With Angels
- Western Hero
- Change Your Mind
- Blue Eden
- Safeway Cart
- Train Of Love
- Trans Am
- Piece Of Crap
- A Dream That Can Last
Free Music Notes for Sleeps With Angels
Free Music Review: When Dreams Come Crashing Down Like Trees
Hit: 5 Stars
Sleeps with Angels is one of Neil Young's deepest and best albums. In fairness, it's also one of his weirdest and takes a bit of getting-used-to. If you like the Ditch Trilogy, this one's twice as dark as that (if it seems possible), so it should appeal on that level. Also, since it's completely different than the albums surrounding it, those always hounding artists to do something different rather than ever go back to what they originally excelled at and have the most fun doing should be pleased (in fact, they should be pleased on a stylistic level by most of Neil's records: it's rare that he fully retreads previously covered ground.)
Also like the Ditch-era records, this one was begotten of great pain and sorrow: most famously the death of Kurt Kobain, but also some other dark goings-on in Neil's life at the time of which no one seems to know very much. But what this album does that, say, Tonight's the Night, doesn't do, is to end where it began. Tonight's the Night did this literally--with a repeat of the title track, affectively leaving the album one long wallow in misery and despair, with the griever making no progress to be speak of. Which is all well and good, and can make for compelling listening on occasion, but this album goes somewhere completely different: in spite of the overwhelming darkness that pervades most of the songs, remarkably, the strongest emotion ultimately present in the work is Hope. There is a very definite progression in the album from disheartenment and desperation ("I'm not sure what love can do") to confidence and faith ("there is a better life for me someday"). Nowhere is this more evident than on the album's cover: it shows a figure in silhouette, surrounded by desperate, hellish blacks and reds, but apparently focused on a single tiny fleck of sunshine yellow visible through the smallest of cracks in the abyss surrounding it. This is a precursor and visual accompaniment to the songs on the album.
From the outset the Sleeps with Angels feels like an unannounced concept album, exploring loss, hope, fate, and the twisting pathway life can take:
My Heart, featuring an unusual arrangement dominated by lullingly gentle marimba and tack piano, begins the album and is the first of two songs that bookend it. It offers a kaleidoscopic view into the life of one who has lost all he has ever had and is trying to regain his footing in the tightrope act life has become. With it's beautiful instrumentation and cryptic lyric, this is one of Young's most underrated songs and a strong opener.
It segues into Prime of Life, seemingly a flashback from the previous song to just what the title indicates, yet with some as yet undefined specter of darkness looming distantly. Musically, it's a strong rock song much more in classic Crazy Horse vain than the previous track, but again, Neil forges into new territory with a haunting intermittent flute part, blended strikingly with his edgy guitar licks. The flute, along with some of Neil's most poetic lyrics, is the greatest feature of the song.
The next three songs plunge the listener back into the darkness, examining personal loss in greater depth: Driveby and the titular track in physical terms: the sudden and tragic end of a person's life. Driveby is one of the best songs on the album, with its droning one-word refrain and gentle but ominous piano as well as the intricate drumming back Ralph Molina. It's also the most tragic thing on here, especially when one takes into consideration that it was supposedly inspired by real events in Young's area. Yet even in such unthinkablly awful circumstances, some poetic beauty is found, as Neil points out: "I can't believe a machine gun sings"-- one of his most compelling, chilling, profoundly sad, and beautiful lyrics. "Sleeps with Angles" is said to be the track most influenced by Kobain's death. Much like its immediate predecessor, it is a song of tragic death. Again, however, it is the instrumentation which causes it to stand-out: it's a sudden burst of sound apparently out of nowhere-- a muddle of agitated, searing electric guitars and thumping drums, along with quiet but desperate vocals. It's chaotic and experimental to the maximum but it works, and that it was woven so skillfully into the rest of the album is the most remarkable thing about it.
"Western Hero" takes a look at the less obvious side of loss: what can possibly happen when one loses one's soul, as the Frontier Town hero who betrays his culture, his people, and their cause for a big wad of quick cash. In simplest terms, it's what happens when one sells out. Again, there are lumbering, shattering guitar overtones to remind us what album we're listening to. Present in almost all of the tracks, these serve to hold the album together thematically and sonically, especially here, since the themes and setting (old west) aren't normally associated with electric guitars. They are used expertly here to give the album a sonic unity it might otherwise lack. This is particularly apparent in the last resounding, apocalyptic note as the once-icon of vigilante justice presumably meets his end at the hands of his onetime admirers and supporters.
Next come Change Your Mind and Blue Eden, which I like to think of as collectively the centerpiece of the album: one twenty-minute block of music, near seamless. Change Your Mind, a brilliant 15-minute opus, seems to be the heart of the album: it acknowledges the hopelessness and desperation all-too-often present throughout our lives, and which also dominates the album, but also offers the means to the definitive solution: love. It's a strong lyric but it's key strengths are musical: an addicting, almost pop-like melody with beautiful harmonies with Crazy Horse on the chorus and lengthy bouts of some of the most anguished guitar soloing you are likely to ever here between the four verses. The instrumental sections are masterworks within a masterwork.
This general style carries over to the next song, a jam with a great bluesy groove and the majestic title of Blue Eden. This seems to be a bridge between the previous tracks and the ones to come, as it mixes and matches lyrics from three of the songs into a loose fabric apparently about death, loss, and dealing with both. At times it seems to be a representation of the album as perceived by someone in an altered state of consciousness. Perhaps delirious and dying, leaving this world for a supposed next, as suggested by the lines lifted from the upcoming Train of Love: "We come and go that way, my friend"? At times, Young's voice is overcome and smothered by a mess of buzzing, squealing electric guitars, as if whoever he is speaking to can no longer hear him. It's a great arrangement, pained and almost painful at times with vivid guitar solos.
The next track almost seems like the start of a new album, less heavy-handed, obscure, and eccentric, and more general in theme and content. Safeway Cart, however, continues the study of loss, this time on a cultural and societal scale: of those unfortunate enough to live in the world's many impoverished communities, and the opportunities they are often sadly robbed off simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong. The song is a musical portrait of a "ghetto dawn" and one of the best. There are strains of distorted guitar; anguished distant background vocals; and a hypnotically repetitive chord sequence. It's a fascinating song and one of the most experimental things on an experimental album and a minor classic. And with a dim allusion to a happy ending in sight ("just keep rolling on till the ghetto dawn") it ushers in this new portion of the album tentatively but hopefully.
The next two tracks, Train of Love and Trans Am are musically contrasting but lyrically of the same fabric: explorations of the long, twisting, and unpredictable pathways life and, eventually, death take. Train of Love (which, for unknown reasons, reprises the melody of Western Hero) is an acknowledgment of and resignation to this truth and the fact that we as human beings cannot control it. Beneath the beautiful poetry, there is a lulling piano, and, again, unsettling guitar licks over the countermelody, reminding everyone just where we are. As far as why the melody is repeated, I don't know, though I think this song makes better use of it and is generally the superior lyric. Sometimes it does seem as though there are intentional similarities to the words, especially during the countermelody verse (..."never going back.")
In "Trans Am" Most immediately, I was taken with the melody and arrangement, especially the driving guitars. But the lyrics are again excellent, though cryptic, especially through the second verse, examining how changes of fate can occur in the blink of an eye and just how twisted the path of life, as represented by the titular object, can be. Like the old car it references, the song "crawls along the boulevard" ominously, the gear box grinding, tires screeching, with the rider having no way of knowing which way it will turn next.
Then comes Piece of Crap, a grungy intermission with a garage band-feel. It's often been called--not innacurately--an "ecological Welfare Mothers"--and is indeed a rail against the environmental degradation often allowed to go on around us, as well as the sad fact that " they cut the forest down to build a piece of crap" with increasing frequency these days. The theme of frustration and depression continues, but at much more of a surface level, rather than the depth of the previous songs. It's also a momentary sort of thing, rather than the deeper, more drawn-out suffering suggested by other numbers.
Then--out of the blue--with one swipe of the hand across the guitar strings--the album is back where it started, with tack piano and marimba, with the concluding bookend. A Dream that Can Last is the very best song on the album--narrowly beating out Driveby, Change Your Mind, and Safeway Cart, not necessarily in that order. Not only is the arrangement shimmeringly beautiful and absolutely exquisite, but the lyric is sheer and complete poetry: a wonderful, marvelous image of an afterlife that makes all the pain and suffering throughout this one worth while and offers hope to even the most destitute among us, those who cannot find any on earth. And yet the song is ambiguous enough to suggest that the "better life for me someday" may well be set to take place on this planet. Either way, the song is one of immense hope and renewal, which, against, all expectations, defines the album.
What was once a collection of the dark and depressing suddenly becomes an ode to hope, but for love the most valuable of all things to be found in life. And that, in spite of the darkness that utterly pervades 11 of the 12 songs, becomes the strongest, most lingering emotion present on the album and the one to which the listener responds with the greatest intensity. Ultimately, despite it's overwhelming darkness, Sleeps with Angels ends up as a grand monument to hope, which easily bears repeated listening.
This is one of Neil Young's most unique albums--a mix of grunge, rock, poetry, and even new age elements at times--and also in my opinion one of his most underrated and best-ever. Every thing from the lyrics to the completely unique arrangements and sequencing of the tracks works to form one wonderfully cohesive work of art. I would certainly recommend that any fan who hasn't had the pleasure of hearing it should do so as soon as he or she can. It is one of the greatest testaments to his unique art since we were given the likes of After the Goldrush and Harvest. This is an acquired taste--like all of Neil's work--but once acquired, rest assured you'll return to it not infrequently to say the least.
Much like Young's vision of paradise, "the cupboards are bear but the streets are paved with gold."
Sleeps With Angels Poster
Crazy Horse backs Neil Young on his first studio album sinceGenre: Popular Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 16-AUG-1994
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