Neil Young: Zuma

by Jean-Charles Costa

Right away that big, crunchy rhythm guitar sound on the opening track, "Don't Cry No Tears," brings you back to the halcyon Crazy Horse days, the golden Neil Young era that produced Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and parts of After The Goldrush. The legendary Danny Whitten has been replaced by Frank Sampedro on second guitar, but those grinding guitars and the "high and lonesome" sound of Young's vocals immediately recall a cold and gloomy aura that is an integral part of Neil Young's musical personality. Following two stark and jagged-edged endeavors entitled On The Beach and Tonight's The Night, this album pushes hard for mainstream legitimacy, building up and placing emphasis on the instrumental axis with a lot of Neil Young lead guitar in the forefront. Neil's guitar style hasn't really changed, still the "chunka-chunka," scratchy rhythm approach with those angular and treble-y lead lines whining their way around the lyrics.

Neil Young has always epitomized the minimalist tradition in the more recent school of rock "poetry." As far back as the sadly-departed Buffalo Springfield, he packed more imagistic punch in a few terse lines than most of his contemporaries could muster on a whole lyric sheet. While equally talented peers like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell won acclaim through long lines of words that were either startling and revelatory or exceedingly harmonious in terms of pure juxtaposition, Young stuck to a basic approach that was often frightening in its simplicity. At the time, lines like "the race of my head and my face was moving much faster" could be considered universal givens, with instant applicability to the current neurotic scenario of your choice. For many Springfield devotees, Young spoke the plain and simple truth while Steve Stills bored people to death with his didactic sermonizing.

After Harvest, a semi-overripe effort that marked the beginning of a slow glide into a relentless and numbing boredom for Young, he seemed to temporarily vocate his corporeal presence on earth with a couple of throwaway records - a live LP that screamed mediocrity from start to finish and a soundtrack LP for a home-movie pastiche that did nothing to enhance the memory of the Springfield or early Neil Young. The truth, as Young chose to express it, was becoming just a bit more than painfully obvious. His rich sense of melody seemed to dry up temporarily, giving way to an unabashed primitivism in the studio and on stage that alienated many fans through its thinly-veiled edge of psychotic hysteria. Neil had always possessed the qualities "to bring us right down" within the space of a few selected tracks, but this was pushing it just a bit.

I don't know if he intended it to be, but Zuma represents a triumphant comeback effort for Mr. Young. Although there is a haunting familiarity to some of the words and lyrics - "Stupid Girl" and some Dylanesque chord sequences in other songs - Neil manages to infuse each cut with such energetic "angst" that it gives the whole session a freshly-minted feeling of regeneration. There are guitars all over Zuma. The Billy Talbot (bass) / Ralph Molina (drums) rhythm section chungs along triumphantly, fired by the renewed enthusiasm that Young has seemingly brought back to the band. Tunes like "Pardon My Heart" with its eerie, lilting "you brought it all on" chorus show that Neil can still write beautiful and affecting ballads.

Obviously the general tenor of the lyrics is one of bitterness and rejection, themes that Young has leaned on heavily since the beginning of his career. Although he uses a wide range of imagery that includes winged figures, Cortez, and nautical analogies, he is still obsessed with the double-edged phenomenon of alienation from loved ones and people in general. With Neil, one is never quite sure who is responsible for creating these spaces. Songs like "Stupid Girl" and "Don't Cry No Tears" exemplify an attack directed outwardly towards specific women, while tunes like "Dangerbird" and "Pardon My Heart" offer a much more ambivalent view. In fact, "Dangerbird" alternates between the first and third person through some rather bizarre verse structures, creating a vaguely surreal, omni-directional point of view.

Young starts "Driveback" with the line, "whatever gets you through the night" which John Lennon has already used rather effectively in a song of the same name. One occasionally wonders why he often picks up literal bits of other songs to use in his own recordings. Perhaps he's been influenced by some of the young poets who've been using his lyrics as found art in their poetry. In any case, this recurring phenomenon on Zuma, makes one wonder if Young is striving for a synthesis of accidental art, or if he's just getting careless. Carelessness is a fairly important factor at this juncture in Young's career. One has to focus in on whether or not the carelessness is due to a genuine desire to capture ongoing rock "ennui" or whether it's due to a little bit too much "tequila farniente."

This time around, Young has once again directed his energies to capturing and putting across as effectively as possible the essence of each song as an artistic unity. The primary concern is emotional impact not just a passive stab at mood recapitulation. Maybe Neil's was just a matter of too much self-indulgence. Zuma shows that he cares about a two-way communication between performer and listener. There is a sense of commitment here. Young has jumped back into his skin with a vengence. Zuma has been produced (by David Briggs) with a crisp professionalism on all levels, with special care and the implied intent that this album is destined to mean something in the greater scheme of things.

From a personal standpoint - although this is the Neil Young album that all of us "Fans" have been waiting for since Harvest rolled over and died, there is still a vague disappointment after the last track fades into oblivion. Maybe the "whine-iness" that has become such an innate part of the Neil Young persona is beginning to grate a little. During the ebullient sixties his dark mood provided a powerful emotional counterpoint to the goings on, in this era of gloom and recycled sleaze one must ask if anyone really gives a fuck about what Neil Young has to say anymore.