Album Review: Mother Nature Is Still on the Run in Neil Young’s 'Colorado'

Neil Young’s 40th studio album reinvents his classic sounds in a desperate effort to change the course of climate change.

Written by Zac Weiss

In 1979, Neil Young sang “It’s better to burn out than fade away.” He’s spent the last 40 years proving himself wrong. Rather than going out with a bang, Young has consistently churned out work. He’s played with musicians from Crosby, Stills and Nash to Pearl Jam and recorded hundreds of songs in every style from folk to grunge to fist-pumping rock ‘n’ roll. He continues to reimagine the boundaries of what’s accepted and even possible for a musician in his mid-seventies. But on Colorado, this relentless innovator takes his cues from the past in a last-ditch attempt to change the future.

Colorado is the sound of the lost ‘70s. It’s classic and almost sweet but paired with his signature heaviness for which he was called the “Godfather of Grunge.” The songs are folksy ballads, protest anthems, and hazes of guitar interplay. Even the lineup of his longtime backing band, Crazy Horse, is salvaged from the mid-70s — guitarist Nils Lofgren hasn’t played with Young since 1975’s classic Tonight’s the Night. But this adherence to past glories isn’t a result of creative burnout. Instead, Crazy Horse’s mercurial sound makes Young’s meditations on aging, irrelevancy, and climate change hit all the harder.

Colorado opens with a wailing harmonica and Neil Young’s pleas to “think of me” over an acoustic guitar in the eponymous track. It’s a classic Young ballad that takes on a new poignancy in light of his age and fears of disconnecting from younger generations. These anxieties are further developed on “She Showed Me Love,” a Crazy Horse guitar freakout where Young grapples with his years and reintroduces a concern that’s been running through his work for the past 50 years: the destruction of Mother Nature.

Environmentalism has been central to Young’s songwriting since he implored his audience to “look at Mother Nature on the run / in the 1970s” on After the Gold Rush. Since then, he’s sponsored petitions and open letters against environmentally destructive policies of the Canadian and American governments, launched his own environmentalist website, and created album after album dedicated to saving our planet. Colorado is no exception, and over half the record (“She Showed Me Love,” “Green is Blue,” “I Do,” and “Shut It Down”) is devoted to condemning the destruction of the natural world. While it’s a powerful message, it isn’t as thematically strong his 2016 album Earth, a live performance overdubbed with animal noises from endangered and threatened species.

To focus on Colorado’s environmentalism alone would demean its impressive diversity. The album touches on every genre that Young has affected. “Olden Days” is an electrified yet fragile ballad, “Rainbow of Colors” is a folksy sing-along, and “Eternity” even features Nils Lofgren’s tap dancing as a percussion instrument. The spoken word vocals and dissonant guitar feedback of standout track “Help Me Lose My Mind” betray the influence of Sonic Youth, an act that Young both inspired and helped launch to the mainstream in his 1991 Ragged Glory tour.

Young’s obsession with innovation reveals itself in the album’s accompanying piece Mountaintop, a documentary that captures the recording sessions from a series of hidden cameras. It’s a remarkably honest document, free from hubris, and accurately presents both the physical recording process and the creative struggles between Young, Crazy Horse, Lofgren, and producer John Hanlon. Like the album, the film remains raw and real.

Colorado emerges from Young’s inconsistent last decade as a new standard of quality. It revisits the sounds and ideas that built his career while continuing the streak of innovation that drives his ever-changing artistic identity. It’s a tender album, almost sorrowful at times, propelled by Young’s fervor and Crazy Horse’s thin wild sound. Colorado is sharp and focused, but above all, honest. And when Young sings that he was “made to feel / and can’t forget,” he means every word.

REVIEWSAfterglow ATXNovember 13, 2019