Saturday 13/12/08 Neil Young, Wilco, Everest @ DCU Center, Worcester MA

You've seen those guys. The ones who are deceptively young, the ones who look like they've lost several steps, right up until the time they blow right past you. Neil's certainly not gonna grace the cover of GQ any time soon, but damned if the wellspring of rock doesn't flow through him like it's 1974 all over again. About the only other contemporary I can think of who still rocks with such reckless abandon as near-pensioners is Iggy Pop, and he's just a freak of nature. Neil was on the second leg of his Chrome Dreams II tour, following the last year's highly successful first part which took place in small theaters. This time around he played the hockey arena circuit, and had some familiar parts still on hand (stage props like the wooden Indian and the red telephone; personnel like Ben Keith and Rick Rosas plus his wife Pegi) but thankfully he revamped the setlist. Don't get me wrong. I've no complaints about what was played last tour (and there were some real gems, like 'A Man Needs A Maid' and 'No Hidden Path') but the guy's got an incredible songbook to pull from, so hearing different material was the correct decision.

When you've got a massive Magnatone cabinet on stage and a black Les Paul hanging from around your shoulders, a heavy decibel attack is the strategy that will be fail-safe. Neil's no stranger to loud volume, and from the opening salvos of 'Love and Only Love' and 'Hey Hey My My' it was clear that the volume knob would be near eleven most of the night, and his familiar dinosaur stomp and staccato attack on the lower strings was in full flourish. His E and A strings must be suited for stump-pulling duties, as they survived the brazen attacks until the very end (more on that later). He would occasionally retreat from the heavy mantle of sound and pull back, offering the gentle sounds of "Mother Earth" (with him playing pump organ) and a trio from Harvest ("Old Man," "The Needle and Damage Done," and "Heart of Gold").

A somewhat surprising total of seven new songs were played, and this was where the USS Neil Young started to hit some choppy water. The current frame of Neil's song writing muse appears to be squarely centered around energy, it's use and abuse, and the consequences; songs like 'Cough Up The Bucks', 'Fuel of the People', 'Hit The Road And Go To Town' and the descending blues vamp of 'Get Behind The Wheel' all belie a targeted perspective towards the oil industry and how our choices influence it. Unfortunately, the material more or less flagged. I'd have rather seen 'Ordinary People' played (haven't seen that since the Blue Notes tour a decade-plus ago), and 'When Worlds Collide' was the only song which didn't sound woefully out of place when surrounded like prime material such as 'Powderfinger', 'Cortez The Killer' or 'Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere'. In a way, I think Neil fully recognizes that he's not going to be a change agent with these songs; the new 'Singing a Song Won't Change The World' reflects this pretty plainly.

The ship was steered back to course with a truly magnificent 'Cowgirl In The Sand.' Last year Neil played this beautifully on his trusty Martin acoustic, but it really demands the full brutish power of a Gibson, and hot damn was his soloing fantastic. It's a simple song, one that most anyone with a rudimentary musical knowledge could write, but one which only Neil can play and give it the full power it deserves and relies upon. As I write this review I'm listening to a version of 'Cowgirl' from a bootleg of a Tokyo show taped in 1976 and he's lost nothing, absolutely nothing. The push over the edge continued with an impassioned "Rocking In The Free World," as topically on-tangent today as ever, and the show was capped by a brilliant reading of "A Day In The Life." A Beatles song is about the last thing I'd figure that Neil would close his set with, but he's got a tradition of confounding expectations and it worked brilliantly, closing with his strings all ripped out and billowing in the air, feeding back sparks of noise over the wordless "Ah" vocal line as a refrain.  

Wilco hasn't played Boston in about 18 months now, but at least Worcester was closer than the Western Massachusetts venue they played this summer (Tanglewood, an outdoor amphitheater typically used for classical music). I'd personally not seen the band since 2002, and was excited to see Nels Cline for the first time. Man did he deliver; effortless playing, liquid tone, knowing when to play and when to hold back. What a great addition to the band. Jeff Tweedy showed that he's been paying attention to the technical details and peeled off a few nasty leads as well.  Opener 'Via Chicago' got a bit of the noise/bombast treatment that Wilco employed on 'Misunderstood' and threw another curveball at Neil's audience with the motorik mantra-like rhythms of 'Spiders (Kidsmoke)' which culminated in a glorious payback of guitars locked into a single riff.  A wistful 'Jesus, etc.' showed their ballad side too; Wilco is a band which is supremely confident and at the top of their game. Great choice by Neil for including them on the tour. Openers Everest have been signed to Neil's Vapor label, and displayed a brashful rock sound. Leader Russ Pollard (ex-Sebadoh, also played with The Watson Twins) has left his usual position on the drum seat and picked up a guitar, producing some pretty decent material which was well-received by the throngs of people who got there early to claim a good spot amongst the general admission/no-seating floor area.

The Show In Photos: