Having re-established his reputation with the musically varied, lyrically enraged
Freedom,
Neil Young returned to being the lead guitarist of
Crazy Horse for the musically homogenous, lyrically hopeful
Ragged Glory. The album's dominant sound was made by
Young's noisy guitar, which bordered on and sometimes slipped over into distortion, while
Crazy Horse kept up the songs' bright tempos. Despite the volume, the tunes were catchy, with strong melodies and good choruses, and they were given over to love, humor, and warm reminiscence. They were also platforms for often extended guitar excursions: "Love to Burn" and "Love and Only Love" ran over ten minutes each, and the album as a whole lasted nearly 63 minutes with only ten songs. Much about the record had a retrospective feel -- the first two tracks, "Country Home" and "White Line," were newly recorded versions of songs
Young had played with
Crazy Horse but never released in the '70s; "Mansion on the Hill," the album's most accessible track, celebrated a place where "psychedelic music fills the air" and "peace and love live there still"; there was a cover of
the Premiers' garage rock oldie "Farmer John"; and "Days That Used to Be," in addition to its backward-looking theme, borrowed the melody from
Bob Dylan's "My Back Pages" (by way of
the Byrds' arrangement), while "Mother Earth (Natural Anthem)" was the folk standard "The Water Is Wide" with new, environmentally aware lyrics.
Young was not generally known as an artist who evoked the past this much, but if he could extend his creative rebirth with music this exhilarating, no one was likely to complain. ~ William Ruhlmann