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Songs are his job, and his reserves are apparently inexhaustible.
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It's not what you'd call pretty, exactly, but there's a hell of a lot of charm and admirable grit to Young's decision to say bollocks to politeness and tell it like it is.
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If that person favours the smoking, ragged garage rock that comprises the bulk of Fork In The Road, then you’d have to conclude, job done.
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Pragmatically exploiting his sure tune sense, his saving falsetto and a command of the political facts well exceeding that of Living With War, he’s turned out the first great protest album of the new dispensation.
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Like so many Young albums, there are the tracks that rise to another level (the 'Ragged Glory'-like 'Just Singing a Song' included) and there are those destined to be forgotten. True to himself, though, Young is inspired throughout.
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Mr. Young is in his electric bar band mode as the music stomps with bluesy distorted guitar riffs.
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Fork in the Road is charmingly clunky, a side effect of its quick creation and Young's hard-headedness. Neil might be writing records as quickly as a blogger these days but musically he's stuck in the past, never letting go of his chunky Les Paul and candied folk harmonies.
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So it goes with Fork In The Road, a 10-song set that Young threw together to promote his interest in alternative automobile technology. The concept drives the record to an absurd degree.
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The outcome is more noteworthy for Young's stinging guitar work, passionate vocals and his powerhouse band's accompaniment than for finely crafted songs that add considerably to Young's estimable body of work.
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The sloppily played garage rock riffs complement the slapdash nature of the lyrics, and--as you might expect--it’s that loose, under-rehearsed and under-written methodology that is both the album’s strength and its downfall.
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It's messy, funny and pretty crazy at points.
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MojoNine of its 10 songs are around the three-minute mark and as solid and straightahead as the tank behind whose wheel they might've been written. [May 2009, p.98]
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Given that Fork in the Road was inspired by Young's alternative- energy-fueled car, the most appropriate description is probably ''pedestrian.''
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When today transcends tomorrow, as on 1979's Rust Never Sleeps and Freedom a decade later, there's no stopping this "Old Man" whose '59 Lincoln Continental drives these latest headlines.
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The music saves this album from certain disaster--an idea that, at its root is perplexing at best, is executed in an even more clumsy and confusing way.
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Road is a similarly one-dimensional variation on the singer's Grumpy Uncle Neil mode. A semi-concept album revolving around eco-cars and the failing economy, it. . . You've already walked away, haven't you?
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Craggy eco-concept record not the car-crash it could have been.
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The resulting album is a ragbag of environmentalist/credit-crunch rants and rusty old chuggers.
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The rough, grinding quality of the instrumentation fits with the intended immediacy of the project, but the songs themselves sound half-finished and half-considered.
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While the concept is inspired and resoundingly current, the jangly blues-bar rock seems an afterthought.
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Q MagazineNeil Young sounds like he's up on bricks with his exhaust pipe hanging off. [May 2009, p.106]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 11 out of 17
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Mixed: 2 out of 17
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Negative: 4 out of 17
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OldFogeyJan 21, 2010
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VaughnAMay 27, 2009
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AdamGApr 10, 2009