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Given Neil Young's outspoken environmentalism, the fact that Fork
In The Road is a concept album about an electric car shouldn't be that
much of a surprise. Still, most people tend to respond with a confused
chuckle when they first find out. It's difficult to imagine that such
an album could be anything but preachy. Indeed, in some weird,
premonitory twist, a South Park episode featuring an ironically
smug ditty about hybrid cars has already been screened.
But this is Neil Young we are talking about, and while his
recent releases, particularly Living With War and Chrome Dreams II,
have seen him in blunt and to-the-point form, he still has plenty of
imagination - certainly enough to make an album about a hybrid car
surprisingly fertile.
For those still not in the know as to how Fork In The Road came
about, Young is currently working on a documentary on his project to
convert a 1959 Lincoln Continental to hybrid technology and drive it to
Washington as a form of protest. Fork In The Road is a series of songs
that are loosely associated.
The question as to whether they are any good is quite tough to
answer. Come on, it's Neil Young. He's a legend. That falsetto tenor
is present and correct, sounding as beautifully eerie as ever.
Musically speaking, there are some pretty great tunes, even though the
tone of this album is angry and strident, led by punchy guitars. He
even goes completely Beastie Boys on Cough Up The Bucks,
verging on rap during the chorus.
Lyrically, sometimes Young does head into that aforementioned
preachy territory. In Fuel Line, for example, his hybrid becomes She;
Young tells us about the "awesome power of electricity, stored for you
in a giant battery", and urges us to "fill her up". It's probably one
of the most uncomfortable sexual metaphors in the history of music,
but the backing singers are so wonderful that you forgive it almost
immediately.
For the most part, Young is also actually quite on point with what
he has to say. Just Singing A Song has the classic line, "just singing
a song won't change the world", which probably needs to be stapled to
the forehead of just about every artist who got a warm happy feeling
from doing a song for charity and thought they'd done their good deed
for a lifetime.
Throw in two much-needed ballads that hark, in some ways, back to
Harvest in the form of Off The Road and Light A Candle and you have
what amounts to a really enjoyable album. It's not what you'd call
pretty, exactly, but there's a hell of a lot of charm and admirable
grit to Young's decision to say bollocks to politeness and tell it
like it is. He sings on Fuel Line, "some old timers just want to stay
the same". An old timer he may be, but he might never have been more
timely.
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Mercury Prize 2009 nominees
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