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All rights reserved.Mirror Ball - Young, Neil (CD 1995)
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| Track Listing 1. Song X 2. Act of Love - (live) 3. I'm the Ocean - (live) 4. Big Green Country - (live) 5. Truth Be Known - (live) 6. Downtown - (live) 7. What Happened Yesterday 8. Peace and Love - (live) 9. Throw Your Hatred Down - (live) 10. Scenery 11. Fallen Angel
Album Notes Personnel: Neil Young (vocals, electric & acoustic guitars, pump organ); Brendan O'Brien (background vocals, electric guitar, piano). Pearl Jam: Stone Gossard, Mike McCready (electric guitar); Jeff Ament (bass); Jack Irons (drums); Eddie Vedder (background vocals). Recorded at Bad Animals, Seattle, Washington on January 26-27 and February 7 & 10, 1995. All tracks have been digitally mastered using HDCD technology. MIRROR BALL was nominated for a 1996 Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. "Peace And Love" was nominated for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, and "Downtown" was nominated for Best Rock Song. No, THIS is the album on which Neil Young sounds like Neil Young again. Not RAGGED GLORY with its pulverizing guitar catharses--that was the sound of rust waking up--and not SLEEPS WITH ANGELS, which was Neil Young using old tricks to eulogize a new dog. They're both important records, but MIRROR BALL is, plainly, a great one, an album of cosmic brooding and monstrously simple guitar riffs that ranks with his classic '70s discs. Young's band for this unlikely masterpiece is Pearl Jam, who end up sounding less like their accomplished selves than like Young's longtime garage band, Crazy Horse, only denser, because there are more guitars here. Mostly, they bash out supradistorted, plodding power chords, opening up a loud space for Young to bang out his own riffs and solos and croon like a cosmic cowboy. The songs are typical Young epics, with verses so sadly pretty that there's no overriding need to change anything once they get going--quite often, he doesn't. "Act Of Love" is a continuous exchange of two two-chord sections--ABABAB etc.--either of which could make for a classic-rock standard on its own. And the 7-minute long "I'm The Ocean," a manifesto for a wandering poet that pulls in imagery of American Indians, cars and the O.J. trial, goes one simpler, being the same four chords repeated 62 times--no chorus, no bridge, and no call for either. Young and Pearl Jam rock with the excited, can't-stop energy of a first rehearsal take, which some of these tracks may well be--listen to Young call out "let me just play the groove for a minute" at the start of "Downtown." Halfway through the album, Young goes to a pump organ for a haunting, 45-second song about "What Happened Yesterday." Much of what follows sounds like more notes on the death of Kurt Cobain, a journal Young started on SLEEPS WITH ANGELS. "Scenery" is a bitter look at stardom in America, but "Peace And Love," which invokes John Lennon, is a plea to live through this: "Stay for the children/You don't really want to go." It defies the rock aging process that Young, at 49, can still speak in a voice that resonates with Cobain's generation, who could well be his children ("People my age/They don't do the things I do," he notes in "I'm The Ocean"). But he inspired them, and they him, and MIRROR BALL finds him back at his game without having to fit into a new flannel shirt. He was already wearing one. Editorial Reviews Rolling Stone Magazine (01/25/1996) Village Voice (02/20/1996) Musician (09/01/1995) Q Magazine (08/01/1995) Melody Maker (06/17/1995) NME (06/24/1995) Spin (09/01/1995) | Find errors in the product description? Submit a catalog update request now. | ||||||||||||||||
  Neil's Second Best AlbumReview created: 08/08/00 by: tprbob -- a member of Epinions  Pros: Neil's best lyrics and best band! Cons: Wish it was a double CD. I bought this album the instant it came out - without knowing that Pearl Jam comprised the band. It ranks with Freedom as Neil's greatest album. Not to degrade Crazy Horse in any way, but the music on this one is the best of any Young album. Gossard, Ament and company perfectly complement Neil's style of singing. Some of these songs are loonnnnggg, and that is great, because when good licks and good lyrics come together, the songs are often too short. The album opens with "Hey ho away we go on the road to never, where life' a joy for girls and boys and only will get better." The album only gets better as it goes along. The next song, "Act of Love" seems to just go on and on, and you don't want it to stop. "In the Ocean" has another lyric that I love, and one that perhaps describes Neil Young as no other -- "People my age, they don't do the things I do". Neil's fascination with the Ford Aerostar comes to play in this song, and I do not understand why it appears in so many of his songs. Perhaps someone could enlighten me about this. "Big Green Country" is a western song with a story. I take the phrase "that's the place where the cancer cowboy rides" to refer to the Marlboro cigarette ads. "Peace and Love" has an interesting reference to Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin in the same line. "Fallen Angel", I think, has a reference to someone in the first line, but I don't know whom. "Fallen Angel, who's your savior tonight". This is a great album, and should turn a lot of Pearl Jam fans on to Neil Young! I hope it turns a lot of Young fans on to Pearl Jam too! Review ID: 10000000000243137 Epinions.com ratings are not included in the item's average rating. Links in this review may have been removed. |
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