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Are You Passionate? Image
Metascore
54

Mixed or average reviews - based on 17 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
7.0

Generally favorable reviews- based on 11 Ratings

  • Summary: This mellow, soulful effort features backing from Booker T & the MG's as well as a single track with Crazy Horse.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 17
  2. Negative: 3 out of 17
  1. A quietly retro mix of guitars and organ-fueled songs, the music simmers rather than boils over.
  2. Blender
    80
    Young sounds fresher here than he has in nearly a decade. [Apr/May 2002, p.110]
  3. Sure, it's nowhere near his incredible run of the seventies, but it is probably his best album since 1992's Harvest Moon.
  4. Just how bad can an LP produced by "Neil Young & Booker T. Jones with Duck Dunn and Poncho Sampedro" be? Not bad at all.
  5. The catchy songwriting doesn't sit well next to Neil's crunchy soul, and the performances feel so stiff it makes for an unusually uncomfortable listen.
  6. Instead of sounding like a refreshing change of pace, it's a muddled, aimless affair from an artist that's had too many middling efforts over the last decade.
  7. Young's surprisingly conservative new album, Are You Passionate?, is simply frustrating, and worse, often as risk-averse as a CSNY reunion.

See all 17 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 3
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 3
  3. Negative: 0 out of 3
  1. JohnB.
    May 25, 2002
    9
    A passionate new work from Young.
  2. SteveM.
    Jul 16, 2002
    9
    Back to his brilliant best.
  3. IanB.
    Jul 17, 2009
    9
    An album that is a real grower - the soulful side of the legend. This is a lost classic.