Neil Young And Crazy Horse – Sleeps With Angels (1994)
Updated: 4 days ago
Welcome to album review number 800, three years and ten months after commencing this project. At this rate, New Year's Eve 2028 seems like a reasonable completion date to aim for.
No special choice for this milestone, just what was next on the list. We've caught up with the recent purchases and we're back going through the old friends, which this Neil Young album certainly is.
Neil Young was enjoying a run of critical success at this point. Two years earlier, Harvest Moon had been hailed as a worthy follow up to 1968's Harvest, and his appearance on Unplugged viewed as one of the highspots of the series.
It opens with just Young accompanying himself on tack piano on the lovely My Heart, before the whole band joins in for the low key Prime Of Life, a great song. Driveby takes the tempo down further, then the title track, Sleeps With Angels, growls with distorted bass and guitar.
Western Hero is the first thing on the album that's just ordinary, but brace yourself for the full 14 minutes of verses soloing and grooving on the fantastic Change Your Mind. After that, we need a little comedown, and Safeway Cart does the job nicely, Billy Talbot's bass dragging the song lazily along. Train Of Soul is a repeat of Western Hero, with different words, and it's no more interesting, neither is the frankly dull Trans Am. However, to wake us up there's the all out rocker, the angry Piece Of Crap, a great listen before we close with Young at the tack piano again to end with A Dream That Can Last.
It's a fantastic album, certainly among my Neil Young favourites, and one I never tire of. I think of it as one of his more recent albums, but it's 32 years old! Time, eh?
4* - another great Neil Young album, just fantastic
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