GREENDALE

Includes a bonus DVD entitled LIVE AT VICAR STREET, which features a solo acoustic concert recording of the GREENDALE album. Personnel: Neil Young (vocals, guitar, harmonica, organ); Billy Talbot (vocals, bass); Ralph Molina (vocals, drums). The Mountainettes: Pegi Young, Nancy Hall, Twink Brewer, Sue Hall. Includes liner notes by Neil Young. GREENDALE 2ND EDITION includes a different DVD and different artwork from the original GREENDALE. This release includes a bonus DVD entitled INSIDE GREENDALE, which contains behind-the-scenes footage of the GREENDALE recording session. Personnel: Neil Young (vocals, guitar, harmonica, organ); Billy Talbot (vocals, bass); Ralph Molina (vocals, drums). The Mountainettes: Pegi Young, Nancy Hall, Twink Brewer, Sue Hall. Includes liner notes by Neil Young. Critics were sharply divided over this album, some hailing it as a masterpiece and some dismissing it as a tossed-off trifle. Longtime Young fans will notice right away that GREENDALE's raw, minimalistic sound and quirky songs hearken back to such gloriously off-kilter 1970s releases as ZUMA and TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT. This is a "concept album," but it's one of the few instances in rock history where those words needn't send audiences fleeing in the opposite direction. Young's rare combination of deceptively effortless, organic narrative and unpredictable strangeness keep things flowing, and there are valuable moments of humor sprinkled throughout to keep GREENDALE from getting weighed down. Crazy Horse guitarist Poncho Sampedro is absent, leaving Young backed only by the primal thump of Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina, but a number of the tunes stretch out to 10 minutes or more, forcing you to confront the transcendentally ragged simplicity and eloquence of Young's guitar and musical vision. Ultimately, the effect is not unlike that of latter-day Bob Dylan or Lou Reed--a veteran rock poet fully immersed in his idiom pushes its boundaries to meet his idiosyncratic needs, simultaneously confounding expectations and leaving deep footprints in the landscape of modern musical art.