Colorado is not one of Young’s great albums but it’s a grower and could go down as one of his later-career highlights. There’s a film with it; Young’s films are best avoided but someone who did watch said he comments in it to his band: “It doesn’t have to be good, just feel good.” That’s the beauty of this album: it’s not his best but it does feel good.

Given Young’s recent musings, it should be no surprise that the environment features but the passage of time also seems to figure: he’s lost bandmates and a former wife recently. He also seems to reference a few old songs from across his career (last time we saw him live, he said all his songs sound the same anyway).

Highlight for us is Eternity, a gentle song that suits Young’s fragile voice, which appears to be about to love, but the train of love, which goes rolling by (and prompts a refrain of “clickety clack” and tap dancing) sounds like Young imagining eternity flashing by, now close enough to touch.

The album opens with Think Of Me, Young’s harmonica wailing briefly before the band comes lumbering in. She Showed Me Love is akin to classic Young in length (13 minutes) and contains the line everyone seems to be quoting: “You might say I’m an old white guy,” before he catalogues the damage we’re doing to the earth, “old white guys trying to kill mother nature.” There’s a lot of guitar too. Shut It Down (it being “the whole system) also addresses climate change.

A fairly gentle and more folk-based album; but don’t believe the reviews that say it’s rubbish.

 

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