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Provided the current state of this country, one thing you can always expect in this kind of situation is a Neil Young album.
He released his 34th, yes 34th, studio album last month, entitled Fork In The Road, to widespread acclaim. The album is largely one of lyrics, taking aim at the economic rippling effect, the environmental crisis, governmental policy, and the need for a huge step forward.
“When Worlds Collide” starts off the album with the grungy roots guitar we’ve come to expect from Young. The opening track employs odd chorus chord structure compounded to CSNY-style harmonizing, all in the name of Young’s style of distorted folk rock. Armed with his timeless angst of a vocal, Young drives home the point of the way cars and the love of driving them used to be: full of character and spirit, and soon to be environmentally efficient. He’s planning to resurrect this view as he details in “Johnny Magic”.
The punkified blues angst is shifted into second gear with the electric car preaching of “Fuel Line”. Young gripes, “The world is ready for a whole new game/Some old-timers wanna stay the same/They like to advertise how clean and green they are/Keep filling that fuel line/Keep filling that old fuel line.” Accompanying the harshly metallic anything-but-soothing guitar work, Young’s vocal is full of clenched jaw irritation at the static nature of certain sects of this country in response to the energy crisis. In an effort to not leave out a much needed criticism of his fellow artists, on “Just Singing a Song”, Young enmeshes his grunge distorted and harmonically melodic sides to the tune of reminding musicians that just singing in favor of change is nowhere near enough; they have to embrace change in their behavior.
“Johnny Magic” takes a driving guitar riff and puts Young’s moral crosshairs on the issue of cleaner sources of fuel. It tells the tale of Johnathan Goodwin, owner of SAE Energy in Wichita, who developed a way of modifying large cars like the Lincoln Continental into those that can burn clean fuel and get high-mileage. Young teamed up with Goodwin in a project called LincVolt, in an effort to win the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize, a challenge to develop a vehicle that can achieve 100 miles or more to the gallon by 2009. Taking a detour to focus on the intermingled economic situation, “Cough Up The Bucks”, with its harsh metallic soulless chants, is purely a song of desperation to understand the rippling effect of the economic meltdown as it pertains to the situation of the automakers as well as the individual and world as a whole. “Get Behind The Wheel” takes traditional blues and gospel sounds to further the focus on Young’s love of cars and drive to make them environmentally sound.
“Off The Road” and “Hit The Road” are further car anthems, the former a gloomy ballad pleading with people to “never take your eyes/Off the road” – not so much a safety concern as it is a metaphor for people to focus on and fight for the prize of having environmentally efficient cars. The latter a more upbeat blues rock version of the same theme, as the song reads, “From city to city everyone is on the move/Try to find the energy to stay in the groove.........When I’m rolling on those big round wheels/Puts me in heaven that’s exactly how I feel”.
The closing sequence follows the most beautiful of songs on the album in “Light A Candle” and the title track and closer, “Fork In The Road”. “Light A Candle” is a Harvest-era classic Neil Young acoustic ballad, acting as the most holistically inspirational song on the album. Young preaches, “Instead of cursing in the darkness/Light a candle for where we’re goin’/There’s something ahead, worth fighting for/When the light of time is on us, you will see our moment come/And the living soul inside will carry on”. Not to leave us on a depressed note musically, “Fork In The Road” throws together one last blues rock boogie for good measure, this time a full-fledged analysis of the entirety of the situation facing this country, whether it be the continuation of the War on Terror, the Wall Street bailout, the rippling economic crisis, and the environmental future of the automobile. I’ll let Neil close this one out with one final lyric: “There’s a bailout coming but it’s not for you/It’s for all those creeps hiding what they do/There’s a bailout coming but it’s not for you”.
In all of it’s sloppily played and muddily slang glory, Fork In The Road is classic Neil Young: organic in approach and sincere in message.With few popular artists using their stage time for something worthwhile, it’s refreshing to have an artist as reliably outspoken as Neil Young to keep it real. Have a listen.
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