A collective groan from
Neil Young
fans could be heard when it was announced that, as his return to
Reprise Records
,
Young
was engaging in yet another genre experiment, this time recording
blues
and
R&B
with a six-piece horn section. If
Landing on Water
Life
had been lackluster, at least they hadn't been as embarrassing as
's forays into
rockabilly
(
Everybody's Rockin'
) and
techno
Trans
). And if you took
This Note's for You
on its own genre terms, it could be just as laughable. A song like
"Sunny Inside,"
with its marching rhythm and charging horn charts, seemed to demand a forceful, gritty singer on the order of
Wilson Pickett
, and
's watery tenor just didn't cut it. But the album was only half up-tempo numbers; the other half was bluesy
ballads
for which
's singing was effective and on which he sounded more personally involved than he had in years. And even on the rockers, his sense of humor often carried the day.
was the best of
's stylistic side trips because it was the only one in which the style augmented his own instead of overwhelming him. The songs were mediocre, but the playing was spirited. The album earned much better reviews than
had gotten lately, largely because critics tend to stand in awe of the
in whatever form it appears. And
got further kudos due to his contretemps with
MTV
when the video channel first declined to program a clip for the title song because it featured parodies of popular
artists and commercial sponsors, then caved in and named it Best Video of the Year. Lost in all that hoopla, however, was that record buyers never came to the party.
was another commercial failure for
, and it was apparent that, to lure back his audience, he would have to go back to making the kind of music his fans had liked a decade before. ~ William Ruhlmann