From the Library: Neil Young - This Note's For You

Neil Young
This Note’s For You
1988 Reprise

I don’t know if you know this, but libraries are a great place to pick up new music, particularly the libraries of Somerville and the Merrimack Valley. These libraries are not only stocked with classic albums, but commonly contain droves of records from indie-rock Pitchfork.com darlings. I enjoy “shopping” for music at the library because I don’t know what I’m going to find there and because I’m still working with a limited selection. I can’t type a band into a search box and automatically download every album. I’m at the mercy of the front-desk weirdo who orders these albums, and hence I sometimes need to go out on a limb and try out something I wouldn’t have thought to listen to previously.

For fans of legendary and/or prolific artists like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, the library is a godsend. These types of musicians always have numerous unknown and unheralded (re: shitty) albums that the library always seems to have. For a completist like me, this is fantastic. I’m certainly not going to buy a copy of Empire Burlesque, and even the Slovak on the other side of the bit torrents I frequent doesn’t have it. It’s called filling the gaps; I’m missing certain albums from my favorite artists and the library helps me to track down those records.

One such filled hole is This Note’s For You, a Neil Young album released in 1988. Young had released a string of critical and commercial flops throughout much of the 80s (some self-inflicted; he released the nigh-unlistenable Trans to spur his release from his record contract), leading to the release of this album. This Note’s For You helped Young get back on the right track career-wise and set up his true “comeback” album, Freedom, released the following year. The song “This Note’s For You” actually won MTV Music Video of the Year honors for 1989, which I still think is absurd. The content of the video is vehemently anti-MTV, but beyond that, it shows how much MTV and the music business as a whole has changed that Young would have even been considered for such an award, let alone win it.

You could mistake This Note’s For You for a concept album. From its blue, rain-soaked cover art, to its title, to its blues-jazz bar band sound, everything about it gives off the vibe of a smoky basement music club. Young plays the small-time, big fun bandleader on This Note’s For You. It’s a rare and different sound for him, one that works very well.

There are shades of the grunginess that would come to define Young’s 90s albums and which we still hear off-and-on today. “This Note’s For You” stays with the blues tempo, but its edges are sharpened by a forceful opening and refrain. The subject matter is more biting as well, with Young bemoaning the corporate permeation of music and lambasting other artists whose songs are used in commercials to promote corporate interests. Towards the song’s end, Young assures what he assumes to be a mainstream-sick audience, repeating “I got the real thing, baby”. We didn’t know it at the time, but Young was then issuing what would basically be his credo for the rest of his career.

Later, on “Hey Hey”, Young pleads to the listener, “Get offa that couch, turn off your MTV!” Young posited himself as a lone warrior trying to repel the commercialization of music while everyone else in the mid-to-late 80s seemed to embrace that mentality. Rather than sound curmudgeonly, however, Young is so direct that he sounds passionate, inspired, and ultimately correct. He’s stating for his followers and anyone else who will listen, “This is what music is, not that”. That sentiment makes the MTV Video Award win that much more astounding.

There are points where Young falls into the trappings of the era. “Twilight” strays from the album’s M.O., delivering a beat reminiscent of a darker Police song and ultimately sounding dated. Neil was dipping his toes into the 80s distant-sounding big bass soundscape here. That he entered uncharted territory for himself is admirable, but the execution is lacking.

Throughout much of This Note’s For You, including the excellent “Married Man” and “Sunny Inside” (both helped in no small part by a vibrant horn section), Young sounds truly excited and inspired, feelings lacking from much of his earlier 80s output. The record sounds intimate due to its simplicity; there’s no place where the care and craft Young put into these songs can hide. Young is reacquainting himself with the type of music he was raised on, and judging by the late-career renaissance that followed, This Note’s For You represented a cleansing of the palette. It allowed Young to deconstruct, get comfortable, and earn a fresh start.

As a smoky, bar room blues-jazz album, This Note’s For You is an absolute triumph. For a Neil Young album, it’s a terrific curiosity, exhibiting a sound rarely heard in his music. It is a very good album, well worth the zero dollars I paid for it.

B+

John Lacey