As opposed to sounding like Neil Young doing a pastiche of Kraftwerk, Trans sounds surprisingly as though Young is appropriating the approach Kraftwerk took to motorway travel, trains, and computers, and applying it to himself—and he shows a gift for identifying what made Kraftwerk’s vision so compelling. His plaintive melodies fit perfectly, and his keening cry prove oddly suited to the Vocoder and chorusing, often making the lyrics themselves redundant, allowing the timbre of his voice alone to become the instrument. Young also shows mastery of the Kraftwerkian habit of using unresolving nursery-rhyme melodies to create emotional tension, making these songs seem at once from the far future and the distant past—or perhaps from the future of which we once dreamt, leaving us with the elegiac sensation of a post-humanity still experiencing the emotions—ambivalence, love, melancholy—of its makers.

Trans is one of only 2 Neil Young albums I did not repurchase on digital. His next album, the rockabilly Everybody's Rockin, being the other. The 2 albums he was sued over by Geffen for being utterly noncommercial even though Young had complete artistic control. Not sure what the settlement was but Geffen apologized and released 2 more Young albums.

I really liked the previous album re-ac-tor even though it was not well received either. It has a couple of train oriented and very repetitive songs so it was really interesting to read how at the time NY was relating to his son Ben, who has CP, by bonding through their love of model trains. TIL

posted 2654 days ago