Heard Here

Neil Young

Silver & Gold

It is safe to say that no other musician has been as consistently enigmatic and vital to the rock world for the last 34 years as Neil Young. From his founding role in Buffalo Springfield back in 1966 to his billing as the "godfather of grunge" during the early '90s, Young has continually shocked his audience with a wide array of musical styles, genres and backup bands. To review individual albums by an artist whose endurance and stylistic diversity speak for themselves seems problematic. Each album exists as simply another phase, another moment in the career of Neil Young. After 34 years, either you like him or you don't. Whether the album is good or not becomes moot. It is just a new addition to the man's repertoire.

Nevertheless, certain Neil Young songs and albums are obviously appreciated more than others, and it is much more likely that you will hear a catchy hit like "Cinnamon Girl" on the radio than, say, "Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze." Though die-hard Neil Young fans may not care whether their favorite guitar hero scores any Top 10 hits, can anyone truly overlook what appeals to the record-buying masses? For that matter, can anyone deny the importance of commercial success in today's music industry, an industry that values cash more than artistic creativity?

With that in mind, Young's latest collection of lazy country rock, Silver & Gold, can't help but evoke fond memories of past hits like Comes a Time, Harvest Moon and even Harvest (minus the electric edge that made that album his best-seller). Perhaps that's intentional, or perhaps it's just a happy coincidence. Whatever the case, Silver & Gold refines elements found in all those albums, resulting in a kickback yet upbeat album that only an accomplished folk and country singer could produce.

Interestingly enough, the title track on Silver & Gold was written in 1982, and "Razor Love," which has been receiving plenty of airtime on the local classic rock stations, was written in 1987. These cuts stand out as two of the strongest, along with "Good to See You," a pleasant number that sounded better on Young's 1999 solo acoustic tour than it does here with a full band; "Buffalo Springfield Again," a loosely construed apology to his former bandmates that expresses Young's desire to be "back with the band;" and "Without Rings," a completely puzzling and evocative acoustic track that ends the album on a marvelous note. Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris make brief guest appearances on "Red Sun," which only leaves one guessing why Young didn't include them more on this album. Their countrified voices are a perfect fit.

Though Silver & Gold definitely sounds like it came from an aging rocker who is now 54, the songs are good, complete, full and refined. And though the lyrics are somewhat schmaltzier than albums past (with the exception of "Without Rings"), they are both inviting and heartfelt. Thus, Silver & Gold will stand as nothing more than another good album from one of rock n' rolls most consummate musicians.

- Jesse Morse

Rob Reich and Corey Dargel

File Under Popular

Steve Reich. Rob Reich. Coincidence? Perhaps. But the two share more in common musically than one might assume, only the former is a super-arrogant composer and the latter is a Connie.

With this, Reich's and Dargel's debut recording, the two TIMARA and composition major seniors (assisted by Yvan Greenberg) express in nine tracks what they have learned in the past four years at the Oberlin Conservatory: talent is essential, but uniqueness is far more interesting. And when the two converge in the right fashion and are documented appropriately, nice sounds happen.

Floating between phase music and experimentally minimalist wafts of pleasant sounds, a listen to File Under Popular promotes feelings of levity without lacking intelligence. Reich has reached a stage where guitar skills are advanced enough that he can get away with relatively simple parts and still sound accomplished. Dargel's voice is something of a paradox; while he doesn't boast a typically beautiful singing voice, it fits well with its accompaniment without overpowering it. Reich and Dargel collaborate for a balance of tone, creating a cushion for indirect conversation with their audience through a passive aural display.

Word content spans from waiting for the results of an AIDS test ("three to six months") to hints of sexual self-gratification ("absence") and quieter tracks like "anonymous" with more instrumental space to spread out its lyrics almost provoke more thought than the others, simply because the listener has more time for these thoughts to sink in. Interestingly, only selective lyrics are included amidst the album's beautifully fitting artwork, making the listener all the more curious for the songs that have been forgotten, especially since they were left out on purpose. This is how the musicians work, and their album reflects it.

More than anything, File Under Popular emanates and encourages perception on the listener's part. The album reveals an almost intimately naked side of a duo too advanced to be deemed a "campus band." Rather, Reich and Dargel form a project, whose mission statement might mention something about thoughtfulness, clarity and the importance of paying attention to one's surroundings: File Under Popular is what they sound like.

- Lauren Viera

File Under Popular is available for $7 by e-mailing Rob.Reich or Corey.Dargel. The duo, assisted by choreographer Yvan Greenberg, will perform at The Knitting Factory in New York on May 30 at 8 p.m.

Billy Joel

2000 Years: The Millennium Concert

So you're an aging pop star who has spent the last decade releasing greatest hits collections, boxed sets and a single full-length album of new material. As a younger man, you vented your youthful frustrations on stage, tearing your negative reviews to shreds and burning them atop your precious Baby Grand for the amusement of your fans. But now, you're considered an elder statesman in the music industry, a distinguished artist whose career is winding to a graceful close. Through some minor miracle, you have released as many multi-platinum albums as the Beatles, and you were recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. You even made an obligatory appearance on Behind the Music. What should you do next?

If you're Billy Joel, you would embark on a brief farewell tour and make a few bucks on the side by releasing a wholly unnecessary live album like 2000 Years: The Millennium Concert. Culled from a single performance at Madison Square Garden on New Year's Eve, 2000 Years features most of the hits that made Joel a soft-rock superstar, from FM staples like "Big Shot" and "Allentown" to more recent smashes like "We Didn't Start the Fire" and "River of Dreams." But Joel doesn't stop there. Instead, he pulls out all the stops, punishing his audience with misguided covers of classical pieces ("Beethoven's Ninth Symphony"), traditional Irish ballads ("Auld Lang Syne") and rock classics ("Honky Tonk Women"). More than anything, Joel seems determined to show off his range. One minute, he's pretending to be a world-class pianist; the next, he's dragging the memory of Sly and the Family Stone through the dirt with his soulless rendition of "Dance to the Music." But for all his childish theatrics and furious playing, Joel simply lacks the talent to transcend genres from song to song, and on many of the tracks he sounds more like a desperate lounge singer than an accomplished musician.

That's not to say the entire album is a disappointment. Like Peter Frampton did so many years before him, Joel comes alive on tracks like "Angry Young Man" and "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me." But the highlight of 2000 Years is "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant," the epic number that captures Joel at his very best, both lyrically and artistically. On "Scenes," Joel wisely steers clear of any crowd-pleasing gimmicks and concentrates his energy on the music, and the difference is obvious.

Unfortunately, most of the material on 2000 Years is ruined by Joel's desire to be a musical chameleon. During "River of Dreams," for instance, he interrupts his standard concert repertoire for a mind-numbing medley of doo-wop hits from the '50s and '60s, as if to prove that he can cover the hits as well as he can write them. But Joel is clearly stretching his talents thin, and the results are as embarrassing as they are painful.

For that matter, there are plenty of embarrassing moments on 2000 Years, and every one of them is captured for posterity on this overblown, ill-advised double-disc set. That's too bad, because Joel still has the tools to be a pop superstar. He just needs to overcome his subconscious desire to be an all-purpose Vegas crooner.

- Rossiter Drake

Macha and Bedhead

Macha Loved Bedhead Loved Macha

Bedhead was dead. With Macha Loved Bedhead, Bedhead rises from the grave with an 86- track mix of instrumental space rock classics and sweet sounding, multi-layered up-tempo ballads. The production of the album is almost as unique as the story that accompanies it. After two principal songwriters, brothers Matt and Bubba Kadane, decided to call it quits with Bedhead, they sent songs-in-progress to their old friends in Macha, Joshua and Mischo McKay. When Macha got a hold of these unfinished Bedhead recordings they finished them up adding highly textural layers of vibraphone, keyboards and sampled drums, and put it all together in a way that is tough to tell where Bedhead ends and Macha begins. Though much more complex than anything in the Bedhead catalogue, it has all of the lush guitar work of the band's earlier efforts coupled with the instrumental smartness that makes Macha one of the most interesting bands around.

Perhaps the most striking quality of the album is in its broad spatial qualities. In what the band calls "vistas to the internal landscapes that have shaped these two extraordinary bands," there is little doubt that the posthumous collaboration will earn a place in the collection of the fans of both Macha and Bedhead alike.

The tracks of the album are held together seamlessly with dynamic noise and faint vocal samples, giving it an eerie and hypnotic flow that will make it the best make out record since My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. Track 86 finishes the record with a washed out cover of Cher's "Believe" that is initiated by the tones of a telephone playing fragments of the songs melody. Through slight alterations in the original lyrics and a radical change in the rhythmic feel, the bands prove that they have the ability to make something out of nothing.

- Nate Cavalieri