Neil Young - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969)

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Neil Young's second solo album since the collapse of Buffalo Springfield and his first LP with the backing group Crazy Horse, starts off with two direct, short, sharp rockers that are among the most biting songs ever to come out of the West Coast scene. "Cinnamon Girl" broods with a powerful vibe, reverberating vividly in the final chords, and the title track bristles with pointed notes that propel the melody forward.  Then Young follows them with longer songs that seem to go on interminably.  

What's Young doing here, anyway?  Creating an exciting style of rock and roll, that's what.  Young knew that some emotions and thoughts conveyed in rock couldn't be expressed  in three simple verses and an immediate, snappy arrangement.  On Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Young explores isolation, self-doubt, and remorse, and though the lyrics appear to make the point on the surface - the words to "Down By the River" tell a harrowing tale of a man escaping the burden of his love for a woman by murdering her  - the real story is told through the music.  The staccato guitar solos, a foreboding bass, and deadened drums on "Down By the River," for example, go on in a long, rambling conversation with each other.  By communicating with Crazy Horse, and through the musical feedback Crazy Horse members Danny Whitten (guitar), Billy Talbot (bass) and Ralph Molina (drums)  give each other, Young illustrates the horror of the crime to the listeners.  Young and Crazy Horse go one better on "Cowgirl In the Sand," with more forceful playing in an intense arrangement that takes listeners through a ten-minute sonic odyssey of revelation and self-discovery.

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere is mostly about looking for one's own place in the world, and the fact that Young wrote some of the songs while incapacitated with a high fever explains the desperation he must have felt.  But the album is still liberating; through the country and western ballad "The Losing End (When You're On)" and the introspective "Round And Round (It Won't Be Long)," Young develops a unique approach to his obsessions and paints a fascinatingly cosmic soundscape.  His haunting voice, full of experience and a sense of well-worn worldliness, adds to the overall mood.  On this album, Young, Canadian by birth and Californian by choice, is looking for someplace to stand his ground, even though he knows he has to make his way through a world where every place is no particular place at all.