Barn | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | December 10, 2021 | |||
Recorded | June 19 – 24, 2021 | |||
Studio | Studio in the Clouds, Rocky Mountains, Colorado | |||
Genre | Rock | |||
Length | 42:47 | |||
Label | Reprise | |||
Producer |
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Neil Young chronology | ||||
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Crazy Horse chronology | ||||
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Singles from Barn | ||||
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Barn is the 43rd studio album by Canadian-American singer-songwriter Neil Young and his 14th with American rock band Crazy Horse. The album was released on December 10,2021,by Reprise Records. [2] [3] A stand-alone film of the same name directed by Young's wife Daryl Hannah was also released for streaming and on Blu-ray. [4]
The album is Young's first since the Covid pandemic,and the sessions marked the first time he attempted to record since 2019. Lofgren explains,"In April or May,Neil reached out and said,'Look,we're not going to be able to play until next summer at the earliest. It's just weird to not do anything as a band for a year and a half. I have four songs I wrote. Why don't we get together,safely,in the Rockies and just be old friends with instruments on and maybe record a few songs?' He had in mind that maybe we'd do that a few times in different locations,every couple of months get together somewhere safely —with testing and masks and all that stuff,vaccinations,and maybe after three trips we'd have an album." [5] Lofgren continues,"The plan was to get four songs. He thought maybe he'd write another one. He thought we might do that in two or three other locations through the year,just to work towards a record. The great news was,he kept writing. All of a sudden,we had 10 songs. When Neil came up with this idea it was a Godsend to get together and not only be a professional musician,but to do it with a group of great players I've known for over half a century,making new music. Sitting around telling tales and catching up as old friends is a great thing,but after every half hour of that you get up and play for a couple hours and create new music. That's a real gift." [6]
For the album,Young tried to record the songs as soon as possible after writing them,so as to not lose the feel or emotion of the song. [7]
In a 2021 post to his website,Young states that "Heading West" recalls moving to Winnipeg from Ontario to start a new life as a child after his parents' divorce. "My mom and I traveled across the country together,heading west. She was on her way back home to start over. I was on my way there with her. Here's a song about me and my mom and those 'growing up' times. It's so great to remember her this way!"
The album was recorded inside an 1870s barn in Colorado. Young had the falling-down barn rebuilt for the sessions,he explains. "It was falling down and going back into the ground So we took it and got a real master barn builder and we rebuilt. Made it just like it was in the old drawings of it and old photographs." [8] He continues,"We got these great ponderosa pines —beautiful building,with all these round surfaces. The thing is,logs on top of each other create a ripple of roundness. There's no squares. Squares are the enemy of sound. They create a standing wave,which makes some frequencies jump way out and other ones disappear. So you have to compensate for all that when you’re recording. We hardly had to do any of that. Everything sounded really good,right in the building." [9]
The songs were recorded live as a band,often as a first take. Producer Niko Bolas explains,"You can always overdub or do it again,but you can never do a first take twice. When Neil,particularly,or that band walks in they're not thinking about making a record. They're thinking about each other. So,if you're recording when everybody walks in,then you get all the mistakes that I say come from the angels. Then you can embellish it. You've got ideas to make it better. Neil's all about it;we got all day,that's fine. But don't mess with the first inspiration." [10]
For the sessions,Lofgren plays a piano he calls the "Gold Rush Upright",which he'd earlier used on After the Gold Rush (1970). He explains,"It's the piano that I played "Southern Man" on when I was 18 years old. And "Only Love Can Break Your Heart",and "Don't Let It Bring You Down". So to sit at that same piano at the age of 70 was really kind of spooky and haunting and beautiful." [11]
One of the highlights during recording for Nils Lofgren was capturing the song "Welcome Back". He explains:"We were doing an aggressive take,and then we took a break. We went back up and Neil started,before we really got rolling,singing this very Beatnik,poetry club,spooky narrative. Ralphie and Billy sucked the whole rhythm down and we just stayed there. We started getting a little interplay there that was beautiful,and we meandered for about eight minutes. That was one of my favourite moments." [6]
Young's wife Daryl Hannah filmed the sessions on an iPad and produced a 73-minute documentary also titled Barn. [11]
Aggregate scores | |
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Source | Rating |
Metacritic | 75/100 [12] |
Review scores | |
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Reviewing in his Substack-published "Consumer Guide" column,Robert Christgau gave Barn an "A" and declared it the first worthwhile album of new Young songs since 2009's Fork in the Road . In comparison to that album,he said that "Crazy Horse is quieter and gentler [here] as the green consciousness their boss embraced as of 2003's Greendale turns ever more militant and also,unfortunately but fittingly,much darker". Among the highlights in Christgau's mind were "Canerican","Change Ain't Never Gonna","Human Race","Tumblin' Through the Years",and "Don't Forget Love",although he was most impressed by "Welcome Back",calling it a "full-bore astonishment" whose sincerity is evinced in Young's guitar,"so quiet and caring it feels like love". [14] He ultimately named it the best album of 2021. [15]
Writing for PopMatters ,John Amen gave the project a 7/10,concluding,"Their navigations of sublimity vs. subtlety,maximalism vs. spaciousness,and free improvisation vs. precise composition are like inexhaustible stylistic lodes ...." [16]
Additional roles
Weekly charts
| Year-end charts
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Nils Hilmer Lofgren is an American rock musician, recording artist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. Along with his work as a solo artist, he has been a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band since 1984, a member of Crazy Horse, and founder/frontman of the band Grin. Lofgren was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the E Street Band in 2014.
Greendale is the 27th 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.
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.
Crazy Horse is an American rock band best known for their association with the musician Neil Young. Since 1969, fifteen studio albums and eight live albums have been billed as being by Neil Young and Crazy Horse. They have also released six studio albums of their own between 1971 and 2009.
Sleeps with Angels is the 22nd studio album by Canadian-American 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."
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Crazy Horse is the debut album by Crazy Horse, released in 1971 by Reprise Records. It is the only album by the band to feature Danny Whitten recorded without Neil Young, and it peaked at No. 84 on the Billboard 200 album chart.
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Storytone is the 36th studio album by Canadian-American 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.
Songs for Judy is a live album by Canadian / American musician Neil Young, released on November 30, 2018 on Shakey Pictures Records. It is Volume 07 in the Performance Series of Neil Young Archives. The album features recordings from Young's solo acoustic sets during the November 1976 United States tour with Crazy Horse.
Colorado is the 41st 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.
Neil Young Archives Volume II: 1972–1976 is a 10-CD box set from American-Canadian folk rock musician Neil Young that was initially released in a limited deluxe box set on November 20, 2020. The release is the second box set in his Neil Young Archives series, following 2009's The Archives Vol. 1 1963–1972, and covers a three-and-a-half-year period from 1972–1976. The track list was officially announced on the Neil Young Archives site on September 20, 2020, with the first single, "Come Along and Say You Will", being posted to the site as the Song of the Day on October 14. The set then went up for pre-order on October 16, 2020, as an exclusive release to his online store, with only 3,000 copies being initially made available worldwide. After selling out the following day, Young announced several weeks later that a general retail version, as well as a second pressing of the deluxe box set, is expected to be released to market on March 5, 2021. This was followed by the release of a second single, "Homefires", on October 21, and a third, an alternate version of "Powderfinger", on November 3.
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