THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 30, 1995 TAG: 9506300161
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Album review
SOURCE: BY RICKEY WRIGHT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines
``NO TUNING!'' decrees Neil Young at the outset of ``Mirror Ball'' (Reprise) his eagerly awaited album collaboration with Pearl Jam.
The claim may not be strictly true, but the record, cut in four days last winter, indeed boasts the ragged clarity of Young's finest blasts with Crazy Horse.
Young is backed by the Seattle band on all but two brief solo interludes. His friendship with the Jammers has obviously animated his music, with the result a more cogent garage workout than the sluggish 1994 Young/Crazy Horse ``Sleeps With Angels.''
``Mirror Ball'' combines the string-busting intensity of Young's guitar playing with the disciplined but increasingly powerful approach that his young peers all but perfected on the recent ``Vitalogy.'' There are echoes here that bounce back as far as the first Buffalo Springfield album, and that leap forward into the untangible space wheret great rock 'n' roll lives.
The Toronto-born Young has often drawn inspiration from American myth and its sometimes broken promise. ``Mirror Ball's'' songs resonate with images of John Wayne, homeless Vietnam vets, Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon dying in New York City. Over the surging waves of ``I'm the Ocean,'' he witnesses a landscape rife with ``distraction . . . romance and candlelight . . . random violence,'' and in a play on the Hollywood-cheerleading TV show, ``entertainment tonight.''
These contradictions are made even more manifest in ``Act of Love,'' which Young and Pearl Jam first performed at a Rock for Choice benefit in January, and ``Song X,'' which also addresses the current ``holy war'' against abortion rights. In ``Act,'' Young ponders the difficulty of big choices, and how chances at compassion are sometimes all but thrown away: ``You know I said I'd help you baby; here's my wallet.''
Despite such concerns, and Young's brief, mysteriously elegiac solo pieces ``What Happened Yesterday'' and ``Fallen Angel,'' there has to be room for celebration on a record called ``Mirror Ball.''
And there is; ``Downtown,'' the rocker that gives the album its title, is a timewarping call to party in a place where Hendrix and Led Zeppelin are onstage. The cut is also a joyous reminder that Neil literally has ``Young blood in his eye.'' That blood is pumping on ``Mirror Ball.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
NEIL YOUNG
by CNB