Americana is a journey through traditional North American folk tunes dating back to the mid 1800s, Young is reunited with the brilliantly intertwined and matchless Crazy Horse as his backing band for the first time on record since 2003’s Greendale.
Launching into the ageless “Oh! Suzannah” the true and crackling form of the full band chimes gradually to a full chorus, as Young opines across the top. Big open amplified chords and pattered cymbals are a touch of class. However, after the sure-footed entrance to the swaggering “Clementine”, there’s a ring of forced interpretation
climbing over the whole exercise.
Undeniable is the Crazy Horse ramshackle charm but the choice of songs excite on paper and go backwards from there. Often caught foul and irrelevant, the cast morph into the furry gang from Sesame Street ripping any of the sullen Page/Plant gore from “Gallows Pole”, before a miserable showing of Woody Guthrie’s already dull hymn “This Is Our Land” – which is best forgotten.
50s doo-wop rears its idiotic, finger-clicking head in the guise of The Sillouettes’ “Get A Job” and its inanely repetitive drivel. Awful as it is on its own (or in a commercial), Young’s once sharp but gentle voice is haggard, weathered and terrifyingly worn. That might be the sad realisation for us all, but there’s no need to expose it before the record stumbles to its fittingly misguided finale of “God Save The Queen”, owing apparently to rulers of old. You wouldn’t believe it, but it works better than almost anything else here.
While less pointless than listening to say, Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour compilations (which don’t have him rambling in-between), this will still manage to bore the arse off any listener for at least two thirds of it.
A weaving history lesson, as taught by one of the great exponents of the art of songwriting, promises interpretations of interest but falls well short of anything great.
– Ciarán Wilcox
