Neil Young has long veered from road to ditch. His long and glorious career has alternately thrilled and confounded fans and critics alike, and the current Alchemy tour is shaping up to be no exception.
For the first time since 2003 Young and his long-time backing band, Crazy Horse – Billy Talbot (bass), Ralph Molina (drums), and Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro (guitar) – have hit Australian shores for a series of shows that will, no doubt, prove divisive.
Those looking to hear the country folk of Comes A Time or Harvest Moon, or acoustic classics from After The Goldrush or Rust Never Sleeps, might be disappointed.
Thursday night’s show saw Young and band frenetically grinding and jamming through an odd setlist, including much of Psychedelic Pill and other tracks from the harder end of Young’s catalogue.
As the lights dropped, The Beatles’ “A Day In The Life” rose, as labcoated roadies in Einstein wigs milled about the stage, supervising the removal of the enormous roadcases, revealing theatrically oversized Fender stacks.
A mic of equally epic proportions was lowered from the ceiling to complete the iconic Rust Never Sleeps stage setting.
Four disheveled old blokes wander onto the stage and the Australian national anthem is played.
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They take their places and a roadie hands Young “Old Black”—his legendary ’53 Les Paul—which he straps over a faded Aboriginal flag t-shirt, before unleashing a wall of feedback: a sign of things to come.
The band launches into “Love And Only Love” from the 1990 epic Ragged Glory. As one might expect the track is a lengthy guitar workout. The old guys may not move as well as they used to (did Young ever move particularly well?) but, goddamn, they can still rock.
Young’s guitar work is as jagged and incendiary as ever, and Crazy Horse prove they can still punch out their hard barroom riffs.
Moving onto “Powderfinger”, the Candian icon’s guitar shifts into a more melodic gear; however, that doesn’t last long. The epic “Walk Like A Giant” unleashes a monster of sludge-grunge jamming, with Young abusing Old Black like a seething punk.
The track culminates in a seemingly endless barrage of grinding feedback and white noise, apocalyptic footsteps of giants, pounding onto a bemused audience.
When the track finally does finish, the stage is beset by thunder and lightning, while roadies in yellow rain slickers mill about. After the long-winded chaos of the previous track Young seems to have lost the crowd.
The appearance of his old Martin acoustic recaptures them. Teasingly, he repeatedly strums a recognisable opening chord, without going anywhere, before eventually giving them what they want, his middle-of-the-road classic, “Heart Of Gold”.
He follows with an acoustic version of “Twisted Gold”, then sitting down to a beaten old upright piano, plays the unreleased “Singer Without A Song”.
In one of the stranger moments of the evening a woman with a guitar case, presumably the eponymous song-less songstress, wanders on stage. She awkwardly meanders about like some stoned hippy-chick oblivious of where she is, before receding into the off-stage darkness.
That weirdness out of the way, it’s back to the rock. Young, sliding a pick up a guitar string, slowly travels through time, listing his back catalogue in reverse until he reaches 1969’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and plunges into the lurching classic “Cinnamon Girl”.
In what was almost the highlight of the night, Young and co. punched out hard favourite “Fuckin’ Up”, until the track collapsed into a bewildering exchange where Young and Poncho spent nearly 10 minutes flipping off the crowd and calling them fuck ups, while the audience heartily reciprocated.
Seeing that many grey-haired women flipping Neil Young the bird, is a rare experience.
Moving further back to the Buffalo Springfield days, the band rolls out a crunchy grunge version of “Mr Soul” before hitting the anthemic set-closer “My My, Hey Hey”, followed by the obligatory encore (“Opera Star” and “Roll Another Number”).
Young, as always, owns the stage, in a lumbering flurry of bushy eyebrows, wispy grey hair, sneers and grimaces, he remains the grumpy grandfather of grunge.
Despite the density and chaotic grandeur of the jams, and despite his 67 years, Young’s voice came through as clear and emotional as ever, and his guitar as explosive and devastating.
For those wanting a best-of retrospective gig, the Alchemy tour may prove a mystifying (and loud) experience. But for those who want to see one of the greatest living songwriters, and one of the world’s most unique guitarists, in absolute symbiosis with his backing band, then Neil Young and Crazy Horse are not to be missed.
As usual, he takes the road less traveled, and that makes all the difference.
