As prolific as Neil Young continues to be, much of the veteran singer-songwriter's contemporary output has consisted of repackaged old material in the form of live albums and studio outtakes. His latest, Before and After, continues in this vein, as every track has appeared, in one form or another, on a previous release (with the exception of "If You Got Love," which nonetheless dates back to the sessions for 1983's Trans).
None of that is to say that Before and After is inessential. Young is a conceptual thinker, a fact that his strict adherence to live recording and spartan production techniques has often disguised. On Before and After, however, the concept is front and center, and the intimacy of the recordings emphasizes what Young was trying to achieve rather than obscures it. Barring some keys provided by Bob Rice, these recordings feature Young singing and playing alone in a room, including some awkward fumbling around on a pump organ.
Opener "I'm the Ocean" in particular is served well by this approach. The original song, from 1995's Mirror Ball, is a tiresome dirge, with Young's richly symbolic lyrics drowned out by Pearl Jam, who performed as his backing band. The version on Before and After, though, is definitive, and invites comparison to Young's masterful 1979 folk epic "Thrasher."
Without the distractions and clashing frequencies of a full band, one can better appreciate how the album has been cut together, with subtle musical segues, clever editing, and consideration for overlapping lyrical themes. Young enlisted the help of legendary producer Lou Adler, who helped birth Carole King's Tapestry, one of the most perfectly sequenced albums ever made. Using the setlist from Young's recent solo tour as a template, Young and Adler have compiled a tracklist of lesser-known gems from throughout Young's career, highlighting his lyrical preoccupations with self-actualization and the passage of time.
Perhaps the transition from the mid-'70s outtake "Homefires" ("Gotta keep the home fires burning") to the Buffalo Springfield classic "Burned" ("Been burned, and with both feet on the ground!") is a little on the nose. And "Mother Earth" feels like a mandatory commitment to fill Young's quota of at least one eco-themed song per album. But these quirks aren't to the album's detriment. In much the same way as Young's 2012 autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace, felt truer for having been written out of order, intuitively as the memories occurred to him, Before and After's idiosyncratic nature only makes it that much more appealing.
