DISCS TO DIG: Neil Young, Climax Golden Twins, Parliament

NEIL YOUNG ::: Chrome Dreams II (Reprise)

After spending the 21st century hopping through various bull-headed experiments and genre exercises, Neil comes up with his first album that sounds like a classic Neil Young album. Forget the hype around it’s relation to Chrome Dreams, the aborted album from 1977, and think about it as Freedom II — a return to the style of Freedom, his 1989 “comeback” after a similar decade of inscrutable musical endeavors. Despite it’s similarities to Freedom and the eclectic hodgepodge of bonafide winners (After the Gold Rush, American Stars’n'Bars, Rust Never Sleeps), Chrome Dreams II isn’t much of a record. “Beautiful Bluebird” could have appeared on 2000’s Silver and Gold (but with a bit more bite). “Boxcar” is a banjo-driven affair with some crazy old man lyrics (”I’m like a black man/I’m like a white man/Maybe a red man/I don’t know” — really?). It then veers into the 18 minute plus leftover from 1988’s This Note’s For You (his final ’80s genre exercise — that time around to big band R&B). No wonder it didn’t make it on because it bears no similarity to the dark menace of the albums quieter tracks or the failed pomp of the bigger numbers. Epic Neil Young songwriting, dated in the ’80s by references to Lee Iacocca and third world gun-running, all with awkward horn sections and some really awful sax solos. But the song still moves along, sucking you into Neil’s usual mystery zone. From there there album dips into a couple mellow tracks, some rockers which shouldn’t be considered anything but toss off, and some more R&B/soul throwbacks — which due to the stripped down band are much more welcome than they would’ve been if he tackled these genres as he’d done before. The whole thing closes out with probably the best track on the album, “The Way.” Backed by a New York children’s choir, piano, and one of his better, less-predictable chord changes (this dude recycles!), Neil tries to sing us back to a safe, warm place where everything makes sense. Yes, it’s a new Neil Young record. But it’s pretty slight and I don’t picture myself reaching for it over any of his other releases.

CLIMAX GOLDEN TWINS – 5 Cents a Piece (Abduction)

One of Seattle’s reigning masters of the odd’n'out there, the Climax Golden Twins put out their umpteenth album and first for the Sun City Girls’ prestigious label, Abduction. The core duo (Jeffrey Taylor and Rob Millis) are teamed up with free-zoom drummer extraordinaire, Dave Abramson (Diminished Men, Spider Trio). The record’s first side opens with what amounts to a pummeling free-jazz solo from Abramson augmented by stabs and swells of guitars and other tones. The second half is where it really gets cooking, as the album seems to be a good reflection of their current “rock”-style live shows. Guitars abound through a variety of moods’n'modes, all strung together in a non-stop collage of found sounds, exploding drums, and controlled insanity.

PARLIAMENT — Invictus Recordings

This is simply a CD a friend burned, and I have yet to detrmine what it’s title truly is. From what I can determine, it’s an anthology of music recording for Invictus Records (label founded by Motown hit-songwriters, Dozier-Holland-Dozier). The recordings were made from 1968-1970 and it includes the entirety of Parliament’s debut, Osmium (1970 - their next album wouldn’t appear ’till 1974 and the sound had changed drastically). This falls way more on the psyched-out, freak-rock-soul stew of early Funkadelic then what one might expect from the Parliament side of George Clinton’s brain. Torrential shards of heinous guitar feedback open the disc and it contiunes to simply to way out from there. There’s gorgeous harmonized gospel layered over classical harpsichord, shredding guitar solos, prog-epics, country songs (country songs!), and tons of spaced out-cosmicAmericanasoulfunkwhatever freak tones. Dig on “I Call My Baby Pussycat” — a filthy song now or for any era that grooves and edifies like very few can. This is some of the freakiest, craziest, best psych music I’ve ever heard from any time, any genre. Period.

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