Are You Passionate? Neil Young
With the exception of Duck Dunn’s bass playing, there is no reason to listen to this album
For Are You Passionate?, Neil Young recruited Booker T. & the MG’s minus guitar ace Steve Cropper. The opening track, “You’re My Girl,” starts promisingly with a reminiscent of Stax/Volt groove, capped my a classic Young lead guitar riff, that falls flat the second Neil starts to sing. The combination of a Memphis groove, despite a valiant effort by bassist Duck Dunn, with Young’s voice and a meandering melody just doesn’t work and the basically wimpy backup vocals don’t help either.
Unfortunately, this pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the album. “Mr. Disappointment” finds Young talking the words in a house growl, while ethereal Neil answers him on the chorus. When ethereal Neil sings, “I’d like to shake your hand,” and growly Neil answers, “How ya doin’?”, it’s just silly.
And this pattern is repeated consistently. “Differently” starts with a cool guitar riff, but the song itself never takes off. And it’s frustrating because with Dunn’s propulsive bass and Booker T.’s cool organ, one can imagine a soul shouter like Wilson Picket for instance doing this song.
In the middle of this mess of songs that mostly appear to be about some romantic breakup, but never have the passion to let the listener know whether it’s real or imagined, Young borrows the guitar riff of Aerosmith’s “Last Child,” to create “Let’s Roll,” his September 11th song. Based on the words of Todd Beamer’s last cell phone call, before he led the attack on the terrorists on Flight 93, as a song it fails miserably. The concept of the song itself is a great idea, but in order for a song – topical or not – to work, it has to inspire or be moving. This does neither, though Young finally finds the energy to get fairly passionate on the song’s bridge.
After that comes the sleepy title track along with a feeling of didn’t I hear this song already? Crazy Horse appears on the next track, “Goin’ Home” to liven things up slightly. I’m not sure what he’s singing about because the first verse had something to do with Custer but then the setting changes. Whatever it is he’s singing about, he’s done it before and better, like on “Powderfinger” for instance.
Things are almost redeemed by “Two Old Friends,” which sounds a little like a Band song and pays tribute to The Band in the first verse, but then when the song reaches the “feel no evil” part of the chorus and keeps going to the “in my heart” part it loses all focus.
Production wise, it’s quite good, and the sound throughout is quite pleasant. But with the exception of Duck Dunn’s bass playing, there is no reason to listen to this album again.