Neil Young & Crazy Horse – “Colorado” [Album Review]

The summer before I started junior high, this kid came to visit our neighborhood equipped with a bag of weed and the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young LP Deja Vu. For a week straight I got stoned and listened to the album front to back with “Woodstock“ as my favorite track.

In the late ‘90s I was on an all-reclusive acoustic sabbatical and I found everything in Neil Young I was searching for between After the Gold Rush and On the Beach. Today, I continue this search.

One can only imagine what Neil had in mind with the depth and concept in the title Colorado. I believe Neil wants to engrain his memory as a painted pictorial of his common nature as well as saying more than meets the eye with his words and music. Ain’t much changed since the 60’s, and he’s still confident in his role as a revolutionary, which you can hear with every nuanced pick inflection and cast-to-the-wind vision from song to song.

Colorado is good ol’ knee slapping, front porch honkey tonk combined with slithering crossroads aural penetration and heart-wrenching soul. The lyrics are a reflection of us all, and, no matter your political or religious view, this is a cry for our nation – and entire world – that binds to help restore our faith in mankind.

Revive the “Olden Days” with Neil and the boys.

I would like to think this better than any other Crazy Horse record because it’s technically advanced, but not abused. On past albums, the amps were overdriven to the point of failure and perhaps that was a good thing given the time and element that the music was recorded in. Now everything is levelled out with extra room to spare, giving the songs a chance to breathe with a special quality and airiness about them.

I’m not sure I would actually truly classify this a Crazy Horse album, as it could easily be placed next to any of the solo albums Young has released. A lot of the record sounds as dedicated to California as Colorado; it’s like what John Mayer was going for on his influential outbreak Born and Raised. This is sabbatical, earth music created by a down to earth hippie, freak-flag-flying man that has withstood every president and every war we may have never been through. Neil has seen and done it all before we were knee high to a grasshopper and beginning to crawl.

He is possibly the greatest folk rock singer of all time, his craft means the world to me, and it’s a privilege to review Colorado.

Colorado Track Listing:

01. Think of Me
02. She Showed Me Love
03. Olden Days
04. Help Me Lose My Mind
05. Green Is Blue
06. Shut It Down
07. Milky Way
08. Eternity
09. Rainbow of Colors
10. I Do

Run Time: 50:21
Release Date: October 25, 2019
Record Label: Reprise

Colorado asks us to “Shut It Down.”