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“After the Gold Rush” – Neil Young
(Words/music: Neil Young, available on Live Rust, Reprise 1979)

I vividly remember the first time “After the Gold Rush” connected with me.  I was watching VH-1 Classic and saw a performance from a concert (perhaps in Berlin) in the 1980s.  Young performed the song on his own at the piano with his harmonica attachment, and behind him was a sea of fans largely silent (and swelling to raucous applause for the “I felt like getting high” line).  I remember being struck by the simplicity of the song, specifically the way that Young commanded the attention of such a large crowd with such a simple, fragile song.  At that point, I knew Harvest and the louder rock songs (“Cortez the Killer” and “Rockin’ in the Free World” for example), but this performance sent me deep into his catalogue.

“After the Gold Rush” thrives on this fragility.  Whether it’s the fragile state of the environment, the minimal piano-voice-harmonica arrangement, or the narrator’s fragile mental state, the song feels like it might fall apart at any moment.  Still, it’s Young’s imperfectly wavering voice that makes the track compelling.  It needn’t be perfect or polished.  Instead, it’s a trip into his narrator’s head and a glimpse at his view of the world.  Whether it’s conspiracy theories, fears for Mother Nature, or drug-fueled dreams of leaving Earth, Young’s narrator sounds like a man clinging to his dreams as a last hope.  Desperation rarely sounds this beautiful.

More on Neil Young: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm