I can say this, this is not my favorite Young album. Never was. There are plenty of great moments, The Needle and the Damage Done, Old Man, Harvest, Heart of Gold and the opener, Out on the weekend, which kicks off the whole album with the line, "Think I'll pack it in and buy a pick up." All are some of his finest moments ever put to record. I think the opening line sums up Neil perfectly. This is a guy who does what he does because he has no other choice. If he didn't create, he would surly explode, but he could care less about the whole rock star thing. He certainly doesn't care much for labels, critics or even fans. He is an artist and he creates what he creates, you can come along for the ride or not, it makes little difference to him. He is also principled, he removed his music from streaming services because of the lousy audio quality. His material is available through his streaming service that has high end players and tracks. Some might argue that this was fiscally motivated, maybe, but I agree with him 100%. In this day and age we are seeing the end of an actual product being released for sale. Instead we are going to stream everything for a monthly fee. It's not only a terrible business model, terrible for music in general it also does have awful quality. Even the downloads you get from the big guys are terribly mp3 files coming in at 168 bps. Lossless FLAC files are around 100 bps. Clearly there is something missing here. Streaming is even worse.
I digress. Getting back to Neil and Harvest. Neil has been called the Godfather of Grunge. For good reason. At his rawest, he can hold his own. He is punk, grunge, rock, blues, folk, country, bluegrass. Sometimes on the same album. Even here going from a folk country vibe of Old Man to the fully orchestrated There's a World then the distorted electric of Alabama. The album is not exactly even. Of course it is still his most popular album though. I think it's highs outweigh its lows for sure, but listening to it from end to end is still a little tough to make it through.
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