2021 studio album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse
Barn is the 41st studio album by Canadian-American singer-songwriter Neil Young and his 14th with American rock band Crazy Horse. The album was released on December 10, 2021, by Reprise Records.[2][3] A stand-alone film of the same name directed by Young's wife Daryl Hannah was also released for streaming and on Blu-ray.[4]
Background
The album is Young's first since the Covid pandemic, and the sessions marked the first time he attempted to record since 2019. Lofgren explains, "In April or May, Neil reached out and said, 'Look, we're not going to be able to play until next summer at the earliest. It's just weird to not do anything as a band for a year and a half. I have four songs I wrote. Why don't we get together, safely, in the Rockies and just be old friends with instruments on and maybe record a few songs?' He had in mind that maybe we'd do that a few times in different locations, every couple of months get together somewhere safely — with testing and masks and all that stuff, vaccinations, and maybe after three trips we'd have an album."[5] Lofgren continues, "The plan was to get four songs. He thought maybe he'd write another one. He thought we might do that in two or three other locations through the year, just to work towards a record. The great news was, he kept writing. All of a sudden, we had 10 songs. When Neil came up with this idea it was a Godsend to get together and not only be a professional musician, but to do it with a group of great players I've known for over half a century, making new music. Sitting around telling tales and catching up as old friends is a great thing, but after every half hour of that you get up and play for a couple hours and create new music. That's a real gift."[6]
Writing
For the album, Young tried to record the songs as soon as possible after writing them, so as to not lose the feel or emotion of the song. He discusses this technique in the context of writing "They Might Be Lost":
"It's like a documentary of something that's happening that you think you know what’s happening, but you’re not sure. That's an interesting one. The way that happened was, that's take one. I had a little chord pattern going, I believe [it] repeats itself through the whole song. But anyway, I just wrote the lyrics. I don't sit and play the guitar and sing the song. I might sing one verse, or think it while I'm playing, maybe humming or something. Then I write all the words out and I try to never do it again until it's being recorded with the band. Right before we do it, I'll show the band the changes and I'll let them play for a few minutes. Then I just start. Since it's the first time I've ever done it, it's cool, because you're discovering everything — whether it works, whether it doesn't work. You can improvise your way along because you've got no track to follow. There's no rule, there's nothing. 'Well, I did it great the last time like this, so I'm going to do it like that again.' That's that doesn't happen in this method. So that song is a good example of an immediate take, and lyrics that I wrote on a bunch of little sticky papers and put them all together, and then I had to put them back in order to figure it out. Eventually put numbers on a piece of paper. I write so fast sometimes that it can't tell what's going on."[7]
In a 2021 post to his website, Young states that "Heading West" recalls moving to Winnipeg from Ontario to start a new life as a child after his parents' divorce. "My mom and I traveled across the country together, heading west. She was on her way back home to start over. I was on my way there with her. Here's a song about me and my mom and those 'growing up' times. It's so great to remember her this way!"
Recording
The album was recorded inside an 1870s barn in Colorado. Young had the falling-down barn rebuilt for the sessions, he explains. "It was falling down and going back into the ground So we took it and got a real master barn builder and we rebuilt. Made it just like it was in the old drawings of it and old photographs."[8] He continues, "We got these great ponderosa pines — beautiful building, with all these round surfaces. The thing is, logs on top of each other create a ripple of roundness. There's no squares. Squares are the enemy of sound. They create a standing wave, which makes some frequencies jump way out and other ones disappear. So you have to compensate for all that when you’re recording. We hardly had to do any of that. Everything sounded really good, right in the building.[9] Explains Young, "Geography's important. Not just the room, but where is the room? Where am I? I really care about that. Because every time you move to a new place, everything changes. In the music, you feel some places are good for some things. If it's not happening, I just leave because it's nobody's fault, but I don't want to be part of it. There's some places I just don't want to be after a while with regards to music. It just doesn't feel right. And some places that are great."[10]
The songs were recorded live as a band, often as a first take. Producer Niko Bolas explains, "You can always overdub or do it again, but you can never do a first take twice. When Neil, particularly, or that band walks in they're not thinking about making a record. They're thinking about each other. So, if you're recording when everybody walks in, then you get all the mistakes that I say come from the angels. Then you can embellish it. You've got ideas to make it better. Neil's all about it; we got all day, that's fine. But don't mess with the first inspiration."[11]
For the sessions, Lofgren plays a piano he calls the "Gold Rush Upright". He explains, "It's the piano that I played "Southern Man" on when I was 18 years old. And "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", and "Don't Let It Bring You Down". So to sit at that same piano at the age of 70 was really kind of spooky and haunting and beautiful."[12]
One of the highlights during recording for Nils Lofgren was capturing the song "Welcome Back". He explains: "We were doing an aggressive take, and then we took a break. We went back up and Neil started, before we really got rolling, singing this very Beatnik, poetry club, spooky narrative. Ralphie and Billy sucked the whole rhythm down and we just stayed there. We started getting a little interplay there that was beautiful, and we meandered for about eight minutes. That was one of my favourite moments."[6]
Young's wife Daryl Hannah filmed the sessions on an iPad and produced a 73-minute documentary also titled Barn.[12]
Critical reception
Reviewing in his Substack-published "Consumer Guide" column, Robert Christgau gave Barn an "A" and declared it the first worthwhile album of new Young songs since 2009's Fork in the Road. In comparison to that album, he said that "Crazy Horse is quieter and gentler [here] as the green consciousness their boss embraced as of 2003's Greendale turns ever more militant and also, unfortunately but fittingly, much darker". Among the highlights in Christgau's mind were "Canerican", "Change Ain't Never Gonna", "Human Race", "Tumblin' Through the Years", and "Don't Forget Love", although he was most impressed by "Welcome Back", calling it a "full-bore astonishment" whose sincerity is evinced in Young's guitar, "so quiet and caring it feels like love".[15] He ultimately named it the best album of 2021.[16]
Writing for PopMatters, John Amen gave the project a 7/10, concluding, "Their navigations of sublimity vs. subtlety, maximalism vs. spaciousness, and free improvisation vs. precise composition are like inexhaustible stylistic lodes ...."[17]
