Aug. 01, 2012 - Issue #876: The Art Of Serving

Neil Young Journeys

Fri, Aug 3 – Wed, Aug 8
Directed by Jonathan Demme
Metro Cinema at the Garneau


Neil Young Journeys is both a concert movie and a road movie, alternating between the controlled environment of the stage and spontaneity of the open air, with countryside and small towns gliding past the windows of a moving automobile, prompting memories that in turn prompt music cues. The film shifts between pleasingly unfussy coverage of a pair of Neil Young's intimate 2011 solo performances at Massey Hall and Young's journey in a Crown Victoria from Omemee (" ... a town in North Ontario..."), where he spent part of his childhood, to Toronto for the big shows. Along the way are amusing recollections of youth, like the story about the kid named Goof who gave Young a nickel to eat tar or tell an old lady she had a fat ass, some very pretty scenery and Young's confession that, despite his career-long obsession with cutting edge technology and maximum sound quality, the car, with its tinny speakers and ambient highway roar, is still his preferred place to listen to music.

Given the nature of his subject, more often than not director Jonathan Demme smartly opts to let his camera linger on images of the elder singer-songwriter/guitarist/noise guru/genre-hopper in media res, rather than try to impose excitement through a lot of needless cutting. So we get extended shots of Young's little beak of an upper lip perched on the edge of his harmonica, or, just as memorably, Young's face as seen through a psychedelically lit gob of spit clinging to his microphone micro-cam. The songs are mainly drawn from two sources: Young's recent Daniel Lanois-produced Le Noise, a brooding, skeletal shadow-racket, and from his major breakthrough period of 40 years ago, the era of Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Young's first recording with Crazy Horse, After the Gold Rush, his gorgeous soundtrack for a movie never made, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's Deja Vu. As recordings the recent material and the older material couldn't sound more different, but the very particular sonic renderings Young prepared for the Massey shows make them all feel very much of a piece. Young's beloved murder ballad "Down By the River" ends with a wonderfully spooky and hushed "There is no reason for you to hide ... " There's a stirring rendition of "After the Gold Rush" performed on pump organ and harmonica, and an industrial-strength "Ohio" on a Les Paul. The show ends with a terrifically twisting feedback-operatic version of Le Noise's "Walk With Me." But among the newer material the song that made the biggest impression on me was "You Never Call"—a song that cries out to be covered by Willie Nelson—in which Young repeats a line that evokes death as "the ultimate vacation with no back pain," and spots a dead friend's car in the parking lot outside a hockey game.

Following 2006's Neil Young: Heart of Gold and 2009's Neil Young Trunk Show, Neil Young Journeys marks project number three between Demme and Young. (Actually three and a half, if you count 1994's The Complex Sessions, a 30-minute document of the recording of Young and Crazy Horse's excellent Sleeps With Angels.) Theirs is an ideal collaboration, one founded in mutual respect and an understanding of how sound and image can collide meaningfully and heighten our sense of how the music whispers its way into being or rumbles to life. Here's hoping they continue to find fresh ways of interacting and of tracking Young's graceful slide into those golden years he's been writing about since he was a young man. "24 and there's so much more ... " 

Fri, Aug 3 – Wed, Aug 8
Directed by Jonathan Demme
Metro Cinema at the Garneau vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus