| Americana | ||||
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | June 5, 2012 | |||
| Recorded | October 10–12 & November 4–5, 2011 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 56:50 | |||
| Label | Reprise | |||
| Producer |
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| Neil Young chronology | ||||
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| Crazy Horse chronology | ||||
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Americana is the 31st studio album by Canadian / American musician Neil Young, released on June 5, 2012. [1] The album was Young's first collaboration with backing band Crazy Horse since their 2003 album, Greendale , and its associated tour. [2]
The album was inspired by Young's experiences in his first rock band as a teenager. His band The Squires would play rock versions of old folk standards. He explains in a June 2012 interview with Rolling Stone's Austin Scaggs: "Back in 1964 or '65, the Squires were playing a folk club in Thunder Bay, Ontario," says Young, 66. "A group called the Thorns did a version of 'Oh Susannah' that just knocked me on my ass." [3] Young continues in interviews for the biography Shakey:
"The Thorns came through playin' in nightclubs that we were playing in afternoons. They were the original folk-rock band, okay? Tim Rose and two other guys: no drums, but they had bass, two guitars, I think it was. They did some really nice stuff and sang really well. One of my favorites was "Oh Susannah"; they did this arrangement that was bizarre. It was in a minor key, which completely changed everything, and it was rock and roll. So that idea spawned arrangements of all these other songs for me. I did minor versions of them all. We got into it. That was a certain Squires stage that never got recorded. Wish there were tapes of those shows. We used to do all this stuff, a whole kinda music: folk-rock. We took famous old folk songs like "Clementine", "She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain", "Tom Dooley", and we did them all in minor keys based on the Tim Rose arrangement of "Oh Susannah". [4]
Young's time with the Squires and his early encounters with Tim Rose and The Thorns and his early interactions with Stephen Stills were fresh in his memory due to writing one of his memoirs, Waging Heavy Peace. [5] Young explains to NPR's Terry Gross:
"So I was remembering that from writing my book. But at the same time, I was getting ready to record with Crazy Horse, and I had no material. So I went to my studio with - and the Horse was there, and we were ready to play. And I said, well, I don't have any new songs. I'll try this one here, and we'll try some of these just to get loosened up. So we did those, and there was also one other one from a band that came through to the Fourth Dimension club in Thunder Bay that was called the Company, and in that band was Stephen Stills. And he sang a song called "High Flyin' Bird", which I thought also was great. So as I was in the habit of doing at the time, I copped that arrangement, too." [6]
Young explains his interest in the grittier history and lyrics of the album's songs in American Songwriter :
Every one of these songs has verses that have been ignored. And those are the key verses, those are the things that make these songs live. They're a little heavy for kindergarteners to be singing. The originals are much darker, there's more protest in them — the other verses in "This Land Is Your Land" are very timely, or in "Clementine", the verses are so dark. Almost every one has to do with people getting killed, with life-or-death struggles. You don't hear much about that; they've been made into something much more light. So I moved them away from that gentler interpretation. With new melodies and arrangements, we could use the folk process to invoke the original meanings for this generation." [7]
Young elaborates on some of the forgotten verses of "This Land Is Your Land" for NPR: "Yeah, you didn't sing those. In "This Land is Your Land", I'm sure probably - 'By the relief office I saw my people,' you know, the whole verse there about people being, you know, going to the relief office in the Depression and all of that. And you didn't sing, you know, after they heard about all the people in the Depression standing in the bread line, you didn't sing: 'It made me wonder, is this land made for you and me?' None of that. Those were protest songs when they came out, and they were, you know, cleaned up and milked down for the, you know, New Christy Minstrels et cetera, and everybody got to sing them like they were happy little songs." [8]
For "Jesus' Chariot (She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain)", Young discovered the song's origins as a spiritual with darker, more meaningful lyrics while researching the song for the album.
"I heard that song back in 1964, and I was really into the groove and the melody and the fact that it was an old song with a new melody and old lyrics. And then, when I did it in 2012, I started relating more to the lyrics and did more research on the lyrics. And I actually got into what the lyrics were really about. So I chose a few verses that emphasized a certain darkness, but they were all the original verses. And so that "Jesus' Chariot" thing, I never knew that till I did the research and I just wanted to write interesting liner notes because I felt that the music was a kind of like a studious historic stuff. And I'm using the folk process to change it, you know, which is fair game - but I'm still keeping the message of the original songs. So as I went through and I discovered that it was basically a very religious, kind of a Negro spiritual from back in the day and related to the Second Coming and that the chariot was actually a female - that the she is a chariot and Jesus is coming back in the chariot. It's a very interesting song when you see it for what it is. And then the fact that then there's a darkness. OK, we're going to kill a big red rooster now because Christ is coming back. What does that mean? I found this to be very stimulating. And she will take us to the portals. What does that mean? That's kind of a religious thing. We're going to go to heaven. We're going to go - where were we going? To me these songs are just full of images that are fascinating. [9]
Young recorded the album with Crazy Horse at his Broken Arrow Ranch in October and November 2011. His wife, Pegi Young and Stephen Stills contribute vocals to the final track. Several tracks also feature a choir. Young and Crazy Horse would record Psychedelic Pill , an album of original songs, at the same location a few months afterward.
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [10] |
| Robert Christgau | A [11] |
| Entertainment Weekly | A− [12] |
| The Guardian | [13] |
| NME | 5/10 [14] |
| The Observer | [15] |
| Pitchfork | 6.1/10 [16] |
| Rolling Stone |  [17] |
| Slant Magazine | [18] |
| Spin | 7/10 [19] |
Americana received strongly polarized reviews from music critics. It holds an average score of 68 out of 100 at Metacritic, based on 31 reviews. [20] Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune gave the album three-and-a-half out of four stars, writing that "Americana reveals the hard truth inside songs that have been taken for granted." [21] Dan Forte, in Vintage Guitar , said "this may be his best since Rust [Never Sleeps]." [22] Johnny Dee in his review for the magazine Classic Rock remarks how "Young has picked every song apart, reworked melody and lyrics and made them his own", making them better for it. [23]
In a mixed review, Michael Hann of The Guardian found the album "impossibly pointless" and felt that some songs exhibit "sloppiness" and "unnecessary lengths". [13] NME reviewer considers the album "largely comprised of sub-standard covers of folk songs." [14]
Robert Christgau named Americana the best album of 2012 in his year-end list for The Barnes & Noble Review , [24] and cited it as one of his top 25 albums of the 2010s decade. [25]
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Oh Susannah" | Stephen Collins Foster; arrangement: Tim Rose | 5:03 |
| 2. | "Clementine" | Traditional; arrangement: Young | 5:42 |
| 3. | "Tom Dula" | Traditional; arrangement: Young | 8:13 |
| 4. | "Gallows Pole" | Traditional; arrangement: Odetta Felious Gordon | 4:15 |
| 5. | "Get a Job" | Richard Lewis, Earl Beal, Raymond Edwards, William Horton | 3:01 |
| 6. | "Travel On" | Traditional; arrangement: Paul Clayton, Larry Ehrlich, David Lazar, Tom Six | 6:47 |
| 7. | "High Flyin' Bird" | Billy Edd Wheeler | 5:30 |
| 8. | "Jesus' Chariot (She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain)" | Traditional; arrangement: Young | 5:38 |
| 9. | "This Land Is Your Land" | Woody Guthrie | 5:26 |
| 10. | "Wayfarin' Stranger" | Traditional; arrangement: Burl Ives | 3:07 |
| 11. | "God Save the Queen" | Thomas Augustine Arne; medley arrangement: Young | 4:08 |
Crazy Horse
Additional personnel
Americana Choir video
| Chart (2012) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Albums (ARIA) [26] | 34 |
| Austrian Albums (Ö3 Austria) [27] | 14 |
| Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders) [28] | 7 |
| Belgian Albums (Ultratop Wallonia) [29] | 23 |
| Canadian Albums (Billboard) [30] | 2 |
| Danish Albums (Hitlisten) [31] | 17 |
| Dutch Albums (Album Top 100) [32] | 15 |
| Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista) [33] | 19 |
| French Albums (SNEP) [34] | 27 |
| German Albums (Offizielle Top 100) [35] | 12 |
| Irish Albums (IRMA) [36] | 4 |
| Italian Albums (FIMI) [37] | 32 |
| New Zealand Albums (RMNZ) [38] | 26 |
| Norwegian Albums (VG-lista) [39] | 11 |
| Spanish Albums (PROMUSICAE) [40] | 14 |
| Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan) [41] | 11 |
| Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade) [42] | 17 |
| UK Albums (OCC) [43] | 16 |
| US Billboard 200 [44] | 4 |
| US Top Rock Albums (Billboard) [45] | 1 |
| Chart (2012) | Position |
|---|---|
| Canadian Albums Chart [46] | 42 |
| US Billboard 200 [46] | 182 |
| US Rock Albums Chart [46] | 52 |
Greendale is the 25th studio album by Neil Young. Young and Crazy Horse's Greendale is a 10-song musical novel set in a fictional California seaside town of the same name. Based on the saga of the Green family, Greendale combines numerous themes on corruption, observation of the passing of time, environmentalism and mass media consolidation.
Harvest Moon is the 19th studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released on November 2, 1992. Many of its backing musicians also appeared on Young's 1972 album Harvest.
After the Gold Rush is the third studio album by the Canadian-American musician Neil Young, released in September 1970 on Reprise Records. It is one of four high-profile solo albums released by the members of folk rock group Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the wake of their chart-topping 1970 album Déjà Vu. Young's album consists mainly of country folk music along with several rock tracks, including "Southern Man". The material was inspired by the unproduced Dean Stockwell-Herb Bermann screenplay After the Gold Rush.
Comes a Time is the ninth studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young, released by Reprise Records in October 1978. The album is largely performed in a quiet folk and country style. It features backing harmonies sung by Nicolette Larson and additional accompaniment by musicians that had accompanied Young on his commercial pinnacle, Harvest. Like Harvest, the lyrics to many of its songs are inspired by relationships. In his memoir, Waging Heavy Peace, Young describes Comes a Time as one of his best albums ever.
Weld is a live album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse released in 1991, comprising performances recorded on the tour to promote the Ragged Glory album. It was initially released as a limited edition three-disc set entitled Arc-Weld, with the Arc portion being a single disc consisting in its entirety of a sound collage of guitar noise and feedback. Arc has since been released separately.
Rust Never Sleeps is the tenth album by Canadian American singer-songwriter Neil Young and American band Crazy Horse. It was released on June 22, 1979, by Reprise Records and features both studio and live tracks. Most of the album was recorded live, then overdubbed in the studio, while others originated in the studio. Young used the phrase "rust never sleeps" as a concept for his tour with Crazy Horse to avoid artistic complacency and try more progressive, theatrical approaches to performing live.
Sleeps with Angels is the 20th studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released on August 16, 1994, on Reprise as a double LP and as a single CD. The album is Young's seventh with Crazy Horse. Co-produced by David Briggs, the album is Young's last with his long-time producer, who died the following year. The title track was written and recorded as a tribute to Kurt Cobain in wake of his suicide. Although the rest of the album was recorded before that event, the album takes on a somber, subdued tone throughout. Musician and author Ken Viola described the album as one of Young's "top five records. It examines the nature of dreams — both the light and dark side — and how they fuel reality in the nineties. Dreams are the only thing that we've got left to hang on to."
Silver & Gold is the 23rd studio album by Canadian/American musician Neil Young, released on April 25, 2000. Like the previous albums Comes a Time and Harvest Moon and the subsequent Prairie Wind, it largely features acoustic performances with a backing band of Nashville musicians with a long history of collaboration with Young.
Zuma, the seventh studio album by Canadian/American musician Neil Young, was released on Reprise Records in November 1975. Co-credited to Crazy Horse, it includes "Cortez the Killer", one of Young's best-known songs.
Are You Passionate? is the 24th studio album by Canadian / American musician Neil Young, his only album to feature Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and his eighth with Crazy Horse, released on April 9, 2002 as a double LP and as a single CD. the album represents Young's foray into soul music, one of many explorations into different genres during his career. Exceptions are rocker "Goin' Home", recorded with Crazy Horse, and the brooding "Let's Roll", a response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The album ends with "She's a Healer", an extended jam.
Broken Arrow is the 22nd studio album by Canadian-American musician Neil Young, and his tenth with Crazy Horse, released in 1996.
Homegrown is the 40th studio album by Canadian-American Neil Young. It was released on June 19, 2020, by Reprise Records. The album consists of material recorded between June 1974 and January 1975. The album was recorded after the release of On the Beach and before the sessions for Zuma. Like those two albums, much of the material was inspired by Young's relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress, which was deteriorating in 1974. The album was compiled and prepared for release in 1975. Instead, Tonight's the Night was released in its place, and Homegrown remained unreleased for 45 years. It was finally set for release as part of Record Store Day 2020, amid Neil Young's ongoing Archives campaign. Its release was again delayed by Record Store Day's postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, before finally seeing release on June 19.
Chrome Dreams is the 44th album by Neil Young. It was first compiled as an acetate for consideration as an album for release in 1977. A copy of the acetate widely circulated as a bootleg in the decades prior to its release. The album was officially released on August 11, 2023 to universal acclaim from critics.
Living With War is the 27th studio album by Canadian / American musician Neil Young, released on May 2, 2006. The album's lyrics, titles, and conceptual style are highly critical of the policies of the George W. Bush administration; the CTV website described it as "a musical critique of U.S. President George W. Bush and his conduct of the war in Iraq". The record was written and recorded over nine days in March and April 2006.
Chrome Dreams II is the 28th studio album by Canadian-American musician Neil Young. The album was released on October 23, 2007 as a double LP and as a single CD. The album name references Chrome Dreams, a legendary Neil Young album from 1977 that had originally been scheduled for release but was shelved in favor of American Stars 'N Bars.
Fork in the Road is the 29th studio album by Canadian / American musician Neil Young, released April 7, 2009, on Reprise Records. The album was released on vinyl on July 26, 2009.
Le Noise is the 30th studio album by Canadian / American musician Neil Young, released on September 28, 2010. The album was recorded in Los Angeles and produced by Daniel Lanois, hence the titular pun. The album consists of Young performing solo, mostly on electric guitar with echo effects, distortion and feedback. The sessions coincided with the death of two of Young's longtime collaborators, filmmaker L.A. Johnson and steel guitarist Ben Keith, influencing some of the lyrics. Lanois also experienced a near-fatal motorcycle accident during recording. The album is the first collaboration between the two Canadians.
Psychedelic Pill is the 32nd studio album by Canadian / American musician Neil Young, released on October 30, 2012. It is the second collaboration between Young and Crazy Horse released in 2012 and their first original work together since the Greendale album and tour in 2003 and 2004. The album was streamed on Young's website on October 24, 2012, and leaked onto the Internet the same day.
Storytone is the 34th studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released on November 4, 2014 on Reprise Records. The album was released in two formats: a single disc, which features orchestral and big band arrangements of the songs, and a deluxe edition which includes stripped-back recordings of the songs. Young subsequently released a third version of the album, Mixed Pages of Storytone, merging elements of both, later in the year.
Colorado is the 39th studio album by Canadian-American singer-songwriter Neil Young, released on October 25, 2019, by Reprise Records. The album was preceded by the singles "Milky Way" and "Rainbow of Colors" and is dedicated to Elliot Roberts, Young's manager since 1967, who died aged 76 on June 21, 2019. It was also the first album to feature Nils Lofgren as a member of Crazy Horse since 1971.
