Neil Young isn’t just one of the most covered songwriters of all time, he’s also one of the most tributed. There have been several albums of people doing his songs released over the decades, first and most famously the 1989 LP The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young, populated by artists from the then-ascendant alt-rock generation such as Nick Cave, the Flaming Lips, the Pixies, and Dinosaur Jr., fans who were just as admiring of Young’s contrarian swerves as they were of his beloved 1970s chestnuts. One of the album’s most resonant moments was Sonic Youth reclaiming “Computer Age,” from Young’s then-still-scandalous synth-rock oddity Trans.
The latest entrant into the Neil Young tribute canon is Heart of Gold: The Songs of Neil Young Part I (proceeds from which will go to the special-needs focused Bridge School, which Young has been involved with since its founding). The album opens promisingly with Brandi Carlile’s lovely, meditative reading of “Philadelphia,” a ballad that appeared on the soundtrack to the first big Hollywood movie to address the AIDS crisis, performed here by an artist who has long been an eloquent advocate for LGBTQ+ issues. It’s what tribute records are for, showing us a meaningful echo of an artist’s legacy that might not be the first thing that springs to mind.
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There are other moments that add a little something new to our sense of what Young’s songs can do: Fiona Apple‘s art-cabaret saunter through “Heart of Gold,” Stephen Marley‘s sweet roots reggae take on “Old Man,” Sharon Van Etten breaking down the hippie-baroque “Here We Are In the Years,” from Young’s 1968 debut, into a stately soft-indie-rock ballad, Michael McDonald and the Doobie Brothers joined by Americana artist Allison Russell for a movingly downhome run through “Comes a Time,” and My Morning Jacket jamming with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band on “Like a Hurricane,” even if the big-rock-plus-horns treatment doesn’t fully come into focus. The most powerful moment of renewal comes from Chris Pierce, a roots-folk singer-songwriter who delivers a smolderingly burdened take on “Southern Man,” as steeped in Merry Clayton’s iconic cover as it is the original.
Most of the album stays pretty close to the idea of Young the world has always been most comfortable with, the classic-rock hero and folk-rock troubadour. Sometimes that’s great — as with Courtney Barnett’s predictably deadpan yet also quite smooth version of “Lotta Love,” casually landing between the original and Nicolette Larsen’s hit 1978 version. Elsewhere, it’s just pleasantly solid. Steve Earle country-rocks his way through “Long May You Run,” Eddie Vedder turns in a haunting acoustic version of “The Needle and the Damage Done,” and Mumford & Sons sulk across “Harvest.” Not much here really deepens our sense of the original song in some unforgettable, fundamental way, but everything meets the tribute-fodder standard of reverence mixed with subtle reinvention, and some even exceed it. Part II is on the way, and that’ll be worth a spin too.
