Neil Young's "Storytone"

wow are the lyrics bad, it makes "Mother Earth" sound like Shakespeare or something

the best thing about this album is it's cover

i am not optimistic

Storytone's streaming here, the orchestral and solo versions, pre-release (also the Dylan box sampler):
http://www.npr.org/series/98679384/first-listen The orchestral version is a little longer; maybe there's an overture or something (haven't had time to listen yet).

more interested in the solo version

I expected to feel the same way, but I just now listened to each version, alternating--npr's got it set up so you can either do that, or go straight through each album. I wanna have it all, set up just like this, so some days I can skip a version of this or that, or just play it all. The strings on "Plastic Flowers," the opener, are kind Jimmy Webb-by-the-numbers, could def live without those, but on the second track, "Who's Gonna Stand Up?," they add some drama, like "This place is real purty---but we gotta save it, dammit," and the words and vocal tone def. concur.
Strings also add (even more)just-go-with-it, hippy Disney, tilt and pivot appeal to the more self-parodic ballads, which I won't name. As in spacey Elizabethan luv poetry, some conceits can pay off, but he's not a page poet, so does better (at times) with a little orchestral sleight of hand. These can be kind of Neilapolitan, with a steel guitar, boothump bass,or maybe a nice electric (Fender Rhodes?) electric piano in front of the strings.
Also really like the bluesy big band settings; some of the best tracks are in those. The solo stuff is varied too, with acoustic and electric guitar, piano, ukelele, banjo.
The whole thing is kind of (not entirely)like an older, maybe wiser, anyway even more detailed (though succinct) Blood On The Tracks, with, as prev. mentioned, some very Neilian turns.
"I'm So Glad I Found You" seems like the most realistic and most romantic thing here; each view seems to enable the other. Which is also the point/effect of double Storytone---seems like, so far, hell I may get sick of some of it, who knows.

the unplugged is better. the sad winnipeg croon hits harder absent the saccharine sub-nitzshe strings. this or thurston's is maybe the divorce record of the year. forever young/moore

plastic flowers has one of those classic neil lyrics that i find unusually affecting even though it's kind of dumb when you write it out:

I was doing well
and I though she liked my style
I had no business thinking like that
But it lasted quite a while

damn, hadn't even considered how different this album might have been if jack n was still alive

still haven't had the courage to listen to the orchestral version. i definitely like parts of the solo though!
anyone read the new book yet? i've just flipped through it at the bookstore... some stuff about homegrown in there. annoying that he is happy to write a chapter about it, but can't get around to releasing it. "let me just tell you again how great this record you can't actually listen to is..."

his dying wish is to be buried with the masters, with a vine posted of the lid being closed and screwed down

"volume 2 of archives will be available...in hell"

lol