Neil Young
On The Beach
1974
After the critical and commercial successes of After The Gold Rush and Harvest, Young released a tense series of albums now referred to as the "Ditch Trilogy." On The Beach was the first of these albums and Rolling Stone branded it "despairing." The album was rawer than anything Young had released in the '70s. The first side of the record included jittery, angry tracks like "Vampire Blues" and "Revolution Blues," where he sings "I'm a barrel of laughs, with my carbine on/I keep 'em hoppin,' till my ammunition's gone." Not quite "Heart of Gold."
The second half of the album contains some of the most introspective and beautiful music that Young released in his career. He answers his critics - and President Nixon - in "Ambulance Blues": "You're all just pissing in the wind." The biting lyrics meld perfectly with the sparse instrumentation, supplied by a massive cast including both Crosby and Nash, as well as all of Crazy Horse . After decades of being in re-release purgatory, Young put it out on CD in 2003, giving critics a chance to reevaluate its profundity.
- Mike Murphy
