Album review: Neil Young, 'A Treasure'

3.5 stars (out of 4)

The line on Neil Young’s “difficult” ‘80s period goes something like this: Young was struggling with family issues, battling with his record company, bouncing from style to style willy-nilly like a moth in a lightbulb factory. There were experiments in electronic music, rockabilly, blues and hardcore country. Even his own label sued him for making music “not characteristic of Neil Young,” whatever that means.

Young’s ongoing series of archival releases allows him to have the last word, or at least to frame what he was doing in a clearer context. “A Treasure” (Reprise) documents his country phase and makes the point that, no matter what his detractors and doubters say, it really wasn’t a “phase” at all, but one of his periodic and most fully realized immersions into the genre. The dozen tracks are drawn from a 1984-85 tour with an excellent eight-piece band he dubbed the International Harvesters. It included longtime collaborator Ben Keith, as well as such stellar Nashville instrumentalists as Rufus Thibodeaux, Spooner Oldham and Hargus “Pig” Robbins.

The set includes five previously unreleased Young songs, all of which present credible takes on Nashville traditions: the way cornball humor masks a broken heart in “Let Your Fingers Do the Walking,” the outlaw swagger of “Soul of a Woman,” the sweet celebration of a newborn daughter in “Amber Jean,” the hard-won spiritual wisdom of “Nothing is Perfect,” and the stomping, howling “Grey Riders” – a new, old classic.

What makes this album a must for Young aficionados is that the Harvesters are likely the most musically accomplished band the singer ever assembled. Thibodeaux’s fiddle and Keith’s steel-guitar complement Young’s craggy guitar; there’s an evident virtuosity, but it never comes off as slick. This band could light up any honky-tonk on a Saturday night.

Young revisits a couple of older tunes that clarify his intentions. There’s a twangy, chugging reconfiguration of the hard rocking “Southern Pacific” and also a reprise of Buffalo Springfield’s “Flying on the Ground is Wrong,” on which Richie Furay originally sang lead. In reclaiming “Flying,” Young affirms that for him country music wasn’t just another ‘80s mood swing, but an essential building block of his career.
       
greg@gregkot.com