One of the reasons I like writing for the Times-Contrarian is because I can take it wherever I want to go. It feels a lot like when I started working on newspapers back in 1974 in Austin, Texas. I was a typesetter for the University of Texas' Daily Texan. Then some friends decided to start an alternative paper called the Austin Sun, and asked if I would be the typesetter. Which is actually a grueling job in a lot of ways, and I wasn't sure I wanted double duty doing it. But these new bosses knew I was at heart a music lover, and said they'd let me be the music editor if I would take on the typesetting too. It was a sucker punch, but I went for it. I'd never been a writer before, but I figured how hard could it be? Just write like you talk, I thought, and off I went.

So here I am, 47 years later and still writing about music. Actually, I write about music I love. I never understood the point of taking aim at something I didn't like. Why bother? But it might be a bit strange to write about Neil Young's music since I'm part of his staff, but to me that's looking at the old rules that seemed too uptight. If I love something then write about it, no matter who created it. Why not?

And I can only say that Neil Young's new album BARN hit me with a total wallop right between the eyes. I search high and low now for rock & roll that really gets me. There are now so many different styles of music to search out, sometimes I get lost in the albums at the store that get stocked on the floor. So many interesting things are lurking down there, I don't get too hung up on the new major label releases. But sometimes that changes and an album seems to be calling to me to listen. That's what BARN did. Anytime Crazy Horse is on the bandstand with Young, it's a good bet things are going to fly. They're a band that doesn't approach music with any guidelines but their own. They play with ultimate feel, and seem to know exactly what is needed to turn a song into a soaring statement, one that gets imprinted on the heart and the soul at the same time. It's the kind of performance which really can't be taught. Rather, it is learned over the 50-plus years they've been playing together, and always sounds now like they are playing with one head. Joining original members bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina is Nils Lofgren on guitars, piano, accordion and vocals, Crazy Horse is totally at full strength.

When it was time to record again, there was only one place to go. An 100-year-old barn high in the Rocky Mountains, set in some of the most glorious land in America. There are fields, lakes and mountains all around, but most of all there is the sky above. Bouncing with stars at night, it looks like a celestial ceiling of how the Creator likely felt the world below should be covered with. It's the kind of environment that calls to a person's higher spirits, the ones that fill the heart with wonder and will not allow the machinations of the outside world to intrude. This is the promised land, and there is no way not to rise to the occasion when surrounded by it. Whatever happens under these skies is forever, and that spirit should be honored. And when the full moon joins in that ultimate symphony of nature, well then, there is only gratitude to be bestowed on whatever comes to life during that time. That's where Neil Young and Crazy Horse's new album BARN was born.

It's always been a given, really, that great albums begin with a great song. The musicians' intentions need to be laid out for all to hear right from the start, like a signal is given that something grand is going to happen. It can't be that anything less than the best be used to announce that call. Even when the thought may enter that the strongest punch needs to be saved for later, that's not how the best rock & roll works. If an album is going to make sure it needs to be heard with both heart and head, those qualities need to be shining at full strength. In today's world, there is so much jockeying for attention it's getting easier and easier to be overwhelmed with sounds and sights. It's become far too common to be listening to a streamed song and completely miss what's being heard. Some of that is because of the narrow audio format, but some of it is also because the song doesn't call for the ears to hear. It's like a double trouble dilemma the modern world has foisted on music lovers, and it can be a battle to overcome.

Not on BARN. "Song of the Seasons" is one of the most gently riveting songs of Neil Young's long career. It is a 360-degree paean to not only love, but to life itself. With an undeniably gracious musical movement and deep-born mood of acceptance, it feels like a place has finally been found that calls for nothing but awareness. The strident push and pull of modern life has been stored away. Now, finally, there is nothing to reach for except notice for what is already here: "We're so together in the way that we feel / that we could end up anywhere." The decades and decades of life that pass by have a way of fine-tuning themselves down to an essence of simplicity, a time that doesn't call for decisions or dilemmas. Love answers those questions without ever being asked, like a definition of beauty.

After only one song, the album has announced the journey ahead is going to be one full of substance. There is no clue given where it will all go, but like life itself those are the questions which don't really need to be asked, because faith promises answers will be supplied. It is the only way to enjoy the present, and BARN feels already like a downhome music of the spheres where the journey will be rewarded. The most beautiful sound in the world created is one where the trying can't be detected. Instead, it just is. At this point, Neil Young and Crazy Horse are beyond thought. They are into the mingling of chromosomes and brain waves that is nature's real reward. Now comes the story.

"Heading West" sounds like an explanation of everything, a reflection of Neil Young's early years when life started over as he and his mother moved away from his father and brother in Toronto, going west to live in Winnipeg. But the big bang occurred when Young got his first guitar. Nothing would ever be the same, and the song itself sounds like the audio side of that explosion, like the music blasting out of the guitar was all that needed to be heard. The Young family had been torn in two, and even though there was still hope on the horizon in Winnipeg, the guitar would be the ultimate salvation. No matter where Young was. "Good old days, good old days / Headin' west to find the good old days / Mommy got me my first guitar…" Young sings like he might even have known then, right before he became a teenager, that whatever was ahead the guitar would be the answer for all challenges. As the chords crash around him and Crazy Horse now, it almost feels like he is still wrapped in that original belief which would take him to the moon and back. It is in those moments while growing up when a signal is sent, and if the young person's inner receiver is on and the signal comes through, so much of the confusion which threatens to take a teenager apart can be avoided if a deep calling is discovered. Without it, danger lurks and destruction is easily delivered. But with it, with the power of music arriving full-born, the answers thrive inside and all is possible. And for Neil Young, without a doubt, heading west was the best. That's where the guitar was. Sometimes a seeming disaster can be a boy's best friend.

Just two songs in and BARN's foundation has been built. "Change Ain't Never Gone" looks square in the eye of the coming upheaval as the new economies and the changes needed battle the old to a death match. Which economy can ride to the rescue of the earth's survival feels like a question too big to answer, but answering it is a must. And Young, the Canerican now as his American citizenship became final a few years ago, also sees himself as a hybrid, one that can possibly help forge a togetherness between nationalities, race, politics, everything. Freedom can be the only goal, even if it gets messy. There are no freebies, as the singer knows, and the travels ahead are full of surprises. That's where love comes in again, and "Shape of You" shines the light so bright that a new day begins. With honky-tonk musical roots and a bluesy backbeat, life's ultimate feeling which can never really be put into words springs alive, driven by harmonica runs that pull those elusive stars from the sky and plant them right on the ground. Music has always seemed to be about making the impossible seem possible, whether it's with an ancient drumbeat or an old guitar. There is something for everyone hiding in the rhythm and the chords. Neil Young and Crazy Horse have spent most of their lives finding them, and if anything BARN is saying that will never change. Only grow.

Like many Young songs, some feel like movies. There is an ominous sound in the chords, or mysterious twists and turns in the lyrics that speak to something that is somewhere out there in the ozone. "They Might Be Lost" is all that and more. A truck, full of something, is late and there's no explaining what happened. Is it sinister, or just a mistaken message? No one knows. As Young admits, "I can't quite remember / what it was that I knew." But sometimes it's in the not knowing that keeps everything going. Unfortunately not knowing doesn't work when it's the survival of earth at stake. "Human Race" can feel like a related song to GREENDALE's epic "Be the Rain." Both question the survival of life, cranked to the max, and give no quarter to those sitting on the fence. There is no time for that, Young seems to be saying, and it is those who have been running the world that have to answer for the Big Quandary. Will it be flames and waves, fires and floods we leave to our children? The race is on to save the human race. The starting gun is ready to be fired.

Once again on BARN love steps in just in time. Maybe it really is the only answer, as in "Tumblin' Thru the Years." Life has never been a straight line. Not really. The bumps and the bruises, the twists and the turns are the things that give time its meaning. Otherwise it would all be a blank page. And, really, it's the tumblin' together with someone that makes it all worthwhile. Along with the stars in the sky. Beyond television, beyond electricity, beyond, yes, computers. It's back to the stars as ground zero, so far above us. "Welcome Back," Young sings, to the place where everything began. And may end. Call it the Big Change, maybe, or whatever the next step is. It sure sounds like Neil Young has been thinking on it pretty hard, guitar in hand to pull out the eerie notes from his tried and true Gibson Les Paul, to wake us up and welcome us back. To what we're not so sure. But luckily for us the answer he's come up with is "Don't Forget Love." In the end, it's probably the only way to see where we can find our beginning and our end. Maybe that's because like a Mobius Strip, it's really a circle that never ends. And they're the same thing: start and finish. "There's a secret in every story / in the ways we remember love / don't forget love / don't forget love…" Amen.

Bill Bentley