I saw Neil Young live a short time ago. He played a short, decisive show that included only two songs from his album, “Second Song.”
The album, released on Friday, is at number 38 on iTunes, and 288 on amazon. It’s getting less attention than any of the other legacy acts releasing new music, like Paul McCartney, the Stones, and so on.
The reason I went to the show was because I’d posted the 11 minute title track “Second Song,” which I heard once and thought was impressive. I thought I’d hear the songs in concert, but that didn’t happen.
Now I’ve finally spent time with this album, no phones or other interruptions. I was right about the main song. It’s a masterpiece. But the other six are equal to it in every way. For anyone who’s loved albums like “Harvest,” “Second Song” is a top five Neil Young album. It certainly his saddest since the dreary “Tonight’s the Night” way back in 1975.
“Second Song” reminds me of David Bowie’s final record, “Blackstar,” in that in sounds like a great life summation. I really hope Neil Young is healthy and we have no bad surprises coming. What he’d done here is one of those rare instances where a great artist has experienced a mesmerizing Renaissance. Lightning, out of nowhere, has stuck again.
One reviewer called the album meandering, although it’s not. It’s personal and political. It’s also sweet and melancholy. Neil refers in one song to his marriages and his three children for the first time. This is his great looking-back, and taking stock of his life at 80. It’s not meandering at all. Each of the seven songs is brilliantly constructed, with strong melodies and hooks supporting the lyrics. Listen to it carefully, and you’ll hear the music repeating. The guy who wrote “Ohio” and “Heart of Gold” knows what he’s doing.
The two songs the album hinges on, I think, are the title, the penultimate track, “Soon I Might Be Going.” While the former sounds hopeful about the future while mourning the past, the latter will stop you in your tracks. “Second Song” lives on this verse: I need to talk to someone, someone who smiles and answers back/Someone as old as I am who still remembers some of that/I dream a way of living, a way of sharing what we find/A way of walking slowly through the smoky leaves of time.”
But “Soon I Might Be Going” is a different story. It’s a goodbye, much like Bowie’s “I Can’t Give Everything Away.” Now there’s a special lyric video to go with it. Again, I hope nothing is wrong.
“Soon I might be going, and I wanted just to say
If I’m not here to see it, it doesn’t mean it’s gone away
Trying to make it simple, but I tell you, it’s not
‘Cause here and there and everywhere, the truth is getting caught
And disguised like a celebration waiting for a song
But no one knows the melody and it feels like it was strong
When we all sang together and the children sang along”
The song brackets the album’s opener, another masterwork of melancholia, called “the Foggy Edge of Time,” a farewell to arms if ever there was one.
This is not an album that should just come and go, and be known to a few faithful fans. “Second Song” is important, certainly more than anything in the slots above it on any chart.
