Album Review: Neil Young Feels Feels Like “The Visitor” On This Earth
When you listen to Neil Young, you think you are listening to Time as an entity. He has a way of capturing humanity, according to each generation, for its sameness. The irony of this world is that though we all may disagree on how we should live, we all share the same desire to actually do so. In The Visitor, Young uses his signature voice, to show that for however much humanity progresses in life, it does not seem to grow from it.
Neil Young + Promise of The Real – Already Great (Official Audio)
Throughout human history, our problems seem to have the same source; ego and the idea that any small difference between others can be used as a huge excuse to control them. Tracks like, “Carnival”, “Children of Destiny”, and “When Bad Got Good” all seem to derive from Young’s consistent penchant for anarchism. What can you say? A revolutionary never ages, and Neil Young is using his timelessness to help you see how you have ignored your own. Speeches and soliloquies intertwine in the album such as in my fave, “Fly By Night”, to give more of a theatrical feeling to this album. Young has always been able to construct a song like a one-man orchestra, but The Visitor feels like an Opera. You can see its heroes fall into villainy, “Almost Always” and rise back up again into virtue, “Stand Tall”. It seems that, thought his anti-establishment spirit thrives all the same, what has changed is his wisdom.
Neil Young + Promise of the Real – Children of Destiny (Official Music Video)
From “Already Great” to “Forever”, there is more hope to Neil Young. He never lacked it, but what I find ironic is that The Visitor does not hold back judgement of those powerful figures who lack the heart to empower others. Yet, there is sincere faith in him that as evil rises so does good. Each chord and key is pounced out of its instruments as if he is ordering every sing person to march and resist those that wish to take your humanity because they feel you never had it. Like in “Diggin A Hole”, Young shows the sick twistedness of oppression is that the very people defining you as unworthy of living are the ones acting dead inside; an idealogical battle even your grandchildren will face. Thus, while Young’s album sounds like an ornate, square dance between country, folk, and rock, it truly is literary in scope. Every hook and lyric holds a metaphor that when unpacked breeds mindfulness. For More Information On Neil Young And To Buy The Visitor on December 1 Click Here.
