Earlier in the year, while visiting my parents, I decided to poke my head into their loft and see what was up there. It had been about a decade since I last braved those dank, cramped eaves. I was shocked by the amount of, well, stuff that was up there. Boxes of old toys, old school exercise books, disused suitcases and the detritus of life. While there I got to thinking about Neil Young. Is this what his musical archive looks, and feels, like? Boxes of reel-to-reel masters? Pressings of albums that almost came out? Label notes on unused songs? (Just like my parent’s loft) Neil Young’s archive now has one less box in it as ‘Oceanside Countryside’ has finally come out.
‘Oceanside Countryside’, as the title suggests, is a country-tinged acoustic album. Originally recorded between May and December 1977 at studios in Florida and Malibu the songs feel looser than his previous album ‘American Stars ‘n Bars’ but more playful than ‘Comes A Time’. The artwork features Young sitting rather awkwardly on planks of wood, in a cowboy hat, plaid shirt and sunglasses. Old school Young heads will recognise this cover, as the bootleg cover used for ‘Chrome Dreams’ back in the day so it’s great to see it get an official airing. Though I will say I was confused when I first saw it thinking: “Didn’t ‘Chrome Dreams’ come out already? Bit soon for a re-issue Neil…”.
The majority of the 10 songs were featured on other albums over the years including ‘Rust Never Sleeps’, ‘Hawks and Doves’, ‘Comes A Time’ and ‘Live At Massey Hall, 1971’. The only ‘new’ song is ‘It Might Have Been’. Here Young really leans into country vibes. Slow strumming. Lilting, falsetto vocals with a fiddle solo to boot. It’s one of the standout moments on the album and to finally hear the original version, after all these years, is a blast. All of the songs are slightly different to their original versions. The child choir on ‘Lost In Space’ works better here and on ‘Hawks And Doves’. The star of the show, however, is ‘The Old Homestead’. This version is slightly different to ‘Hawks And Doves’ version. Firstly it’s 30-seconds shorter, yet the playing feels slower and more relaxed. The theremin sounds more pronounced in places. On the ‘Hawks and Doves’ version it sounds just out of ear short. You have strain to hear it, but on this new, original, version it’s easier to catch it in the background.
The only downside to ‘Oceanside Countryside’ is that 9/10 of the songs have previously been released officially, and unless you are a real Neil Young freak the differences are subtle. If this is a prelude to the next run of Archive releases, will the demand still be there for an album full of alternative versions of songs we already know over something as mythical as ‘Homegrown’ and ‘Chrome Dreams’?
As with most of the archive albums there is no real reason why ‘Oceanside Countryside’ was shelved in favour of ‘Comes A Time’. Maybe, as with ‘Tonight’s The Night’ when the time came to release the next album Young was more into ‘Comes A Time’, so it got put on hold. The fact Young recycled the majority of the songs, shows that he was still into them, but maybe it didn’t hang together enough for him. Ultimately it doesn’t matter as ‘Oceanside Countryside’ is finally hear, for us to hear in its glory. Maybe ‘It Might Have Been’ would have been a more fitting title, but ‘Oceanside Countryside’ conjures something more poetic. After listening to the album though, I wonder about Young’s lost album archive, like my parent’s loft, “How much more stuff is in here?”
7/10
Words: Nick Roseblade
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Neil Young – Oceanside Countryside – clashmusic.com
