By all accounts, Neil Young has every right to be on autopilot. He’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he’s beloved by aspiring songwriters everywhere, and he’s released more albums than I can count, half of which were pretty damn good. If he wanted to just release mediocre albums recalling past glories every few years, he could easily be forgiven. Luckily, that’s not the case. Music’s angriest Canadian has continued to release superb new music at an alarming rate. 18 months after the critically acclaimed Chrome Dreams II, he’s back with the excellent new Fork In the Road. This time around, Young decides to rock out Ragged Glory-style, giving us an album that’s short on ballads, and heavy on raw, old-school rock music. Nearly every song works, and proves that Young can still write powerful, relevant music after all these years.
Fork In The Road is a concept album with a fairly obtuse concept. It tells the story of Young’s 1959 Lincoln Continental, which was recently revamped to run on alternate energy as part of his and Jonathan Goodwin’s project to create an electric energy system for cars. That would seem like a fairly linear concept for an album, but Young manages to make it interesting by tackling the concept from many different angles. “Just Singing A Song” attacks musicians who complain about the world’s problems but don’t do anything to fix them. “Fuel Line” talks about the actual construction of the car itself, and the album’s title track criticizes the bailouts being given to the banking and auto industries. The latter of these shows classic Young with the lyric: “I’m a big rock star / my sales have tanked / I still got you / thanks,” which will surely make his listeners happy. From this we can tell that the album isn’t simply about a car. It’s also about the problems we all face in modern times, and while it’s hard to feel sorry for a self-proclaimed “rich hippie” like Young, the album’s message is very clear: everyone is being hit by the economic crisis, and to get through it, we’re going to need new ideas.
As much as I liked the feel and the message of this album, its lack of diversity is an apparent flaw. It’s basically a bunch of straight bluesy-rock songs, with the one exception being the acoustic “Light a Candle.” Young never lets his brilliant guitar-playing ability really shine here, preferring to keep it simple and low-key. Luckily, the songs themselves are strong, and the album is short enough that this is not a huge problem. My attention span was held all the way through, and the great lyrics more than compensate for the somewhat uncreative melodies. Still, if Young had taken his own advice for this album, and thought of some new ideas, it would’ve ranked among his best.
Even with its flaws, this is still a great album. The songs are incredibly fun to listen to, and the message behind them is one we can all get behind. With Fork In the Road, Neil Young not only proves that his songwriting abilities are strong as ever, he proves that even when he bashes an album out quick, and writes lyrics that read like an angry blog rant, he still beats 90 percent of the performers out there. May he keep on rocking in the free world, whether he’s trying to or not.
