Neil Young will be no stranger to the vast majority of you, whether you dig him or not. His new album Barn is coming out tomorrow and I’ve been holding off loading up the album on the shop CD player until Friday. While you may think this is a dereliction of duties, I’m trying to preserve that joyful anticipation you get when waiting for a new album to drop. That Friday feeling, though of course back in the old days it was a Monday when new music came out, wasn’t it? Anyway, I’ve been playing the three songs from Barn on repeat, that familiar, spine-chilling lurch provided by Crazy Horse providing the skeleton for Young‘s instantly recogniseable guitar crunch. This time around the sessions, held in a barn on Young‘s ranch (I am going out on a limb here and not researching this but the Dogma style say-it-how-it-is nature of the recordings suggest that I might be right), feature new/old guitarist Nils Lofgren on rhythm but otherwise it’s glorious business as usual.

This is sounding like classic NY&CH, wonderful warts and all. One-take wonders, paced just right. Young‘s lyrics and delivery have grown into this wisened, off-the-cuff weapon. Lyrically they’re almost diary entries with really literal prose put down over the chords but for some reason with this band and these tones it sounds like some soothsayer narrating an undeniable truth. Young‘s songwriting has become an almost blow by blow account of how he’s feeling at any one time, memories that hit him in the moment and I really do wish he lives forever because I for one will be here for it any old time.