By Eliot Wilder / Neil Young has based his entire career (at least the part that matters) not so much on what he thinks but how he feels, which is especially apparent whenever he dives heedlessly into one of his trademark 15-minute-long guitar jags. Never a technically accomplished player, Young's primitivism is his greatest asset, which is why whenever he adheres to a particular genre - for instance the Stax style of last year's Are You Passionate? or any one of his records from his schizo '80s Geffen era - he comes off sounding inauthentic, rudimentary and stilted. But when he just lets it fly, like on the prickly licks he rips out on "Down by the River," he's fucking brilliant. "It's not simply the two notes," a wise musician once told me, "it's the way he plays them."

To be sure, whenever Neil sidles up with Crazy Horse - arguably the best (or shittiest, depending) garage band of all time - one can expect true emotional sparks, especially when the songs are go-for-the-jugular nuggets such as "Like a Hurricane" or "Cortez the Killer" or "Powderfinger" or "Rockin' in the Free World." This is the dauntless and blistering Neil that most of the world knows and loves. This is not the techno Trans Neil, the countrified Old Ways Neil or the rockabilly Everybody's Rockin' Neil. Or now the high school production rock opera Greendale Neil.

With his latest, Young endeavors to make a BIG STATEMENT about the state of America, with all its craziness and contradictions. Certainly, Neil deserves to be angry with the mess Bush has made not only of the Middle East but also of the economy and the environment. But the narrative of Greendale, such as it is, is simplistic and mush-brained. (Essentially, it's about a mythical, typical small American town and a family named Green. During the course of the action, a cop is gunned down by drugged-out cousin Jed Green; wise, old Grandpa Green has a coronary, but not before delivering a homily that has something vaguely to do with the Internet; idealist daughter Sun Green becomes an ecology advocate ... and then there's bunch of other stuff about the good old days and the death of contemporary mores.) It is, in truth, a bile-soaked rant by a hippie manque, and one that makes about as much sense - and is about as effective - as the babbling kook on the subway who spews some nonsense about promoting satori through asceticism. It's just not very entertaining.

And neither is Greendale. Not only are its stream-of-consciousness lyrics hackneed and corny, but the music plods, the half-baked, monochromatic songs are overlong and the melodies are practically nonexistent. It's not all a folly, but what's seemingly intended by Young as a brave attempt to mount his Citizen Kane comes off more like Plan 9 From Outer Space: earnest, yet naive and a bit silly. And indulgent.

Not that Neil being indulgent is a bad thing. There have been times when his navel-gazing has inspired his best work, as the recently re-released On the Beach testifies. This album from 1974 was recorded when Young was just emerging from a period of extreme inner turmoil and, as Robert Christgau said back then, its obsessive self-examination is not easy to enjoy. Despite it all, it ranks with Young's finest work because, like his most stirring guitar solos, it connects in a way that's purely about feel. We may not always know what he's on about ("I'm a vampire, baby / sucking blood from the earth"), but we do sense he's on about something - something we can intuit, something we can breathe in, something we can empathize with. Unlike Greendale, On the Beach's ambitions are small, with Young merely telling us his truth, allowing it to seep out of him with no strain at all.

Sadly, Young hasn't operated in that fashion for more than a decade (I say his last truly great album is 1990's Ragged Glory), and the hip status that he garnered when he became the Godfather of Grunge has all but evaporated. "No one I know ever listens to Neil Young ... willingly," I recently overheard a twentysomething goth girl say at a local Virgin as a track from Greendale blared. I could see where she was coming from. To her, old man Neil is, like the guy on the subway, just one more addlepated, middle-aged crank.

From Amplifier magazine