a masterpiece, bought

Neil Young’s 1974 album On the Beach is easily one of my top five albums of all time. (I can somewhat confidently identify two others that are in the top five, but we’ll give them their own posts sometime.)

All three of these albums have a few things in common:

• They’re a little bit lyrically bleak, at least at some points, but much more complex and nuanced than simply “depressing.”
• They demand to be listened to only in full, in order from start to finish, through good headphones or good speakers.
• Each song tells its own short story, and together, those songs form a book.
• They deliver formidable emotional kicks, over and over and over.

At the moodiest and broodiest times, this album is on loop. It’s the only one that feels right.

The title track is my favorite. The guitar chord keeps shifting slightly (I won’t pretend to know exactly what chords are being played), as if the speaker is starting to break out of this state, then slips right back into the old chord, and repeats the sequence for almost the whole seven minutes. It’s raw and sad and yet somehow soothing.

That complexity, which also runs through the other tracks, is what makes it wonderful. As the AllMusic review notes, this is not just a plain ol’ “sad” album, despite the overwhelming first impression delivered by both the music and the lyrics. It’s ultimately the exact opposite, in fact.

[T]he album was so spare and under-produced, its lyrics so harrowing, that it was easy to miss Young’s conclusion: he was saying goodbye to despair, not being overwhelmed by it.

By the way, check out who played on this thing: David Crosby, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Graham Nash…

Owning this album on CD has been lovely, but of course, I’ve been coveting the vinyl for years. It was too pricey until last week, when I received a $50 Amazon gift card and stumbled upon a (very-good-plus-rated) copy from 1974 that was just over $50. Finally! It’s on its way.