Neil Young began this psychedelic saga
while rambling through his past in search of material for his book Waging Heavy
Peace, a book that’s both compelling, labored, and more disjointed than one can
imagine; though if one considers the six decades that make up the musical
career of Mr. Young … this is about as straight forward as you ever gonna
get.

Psychedelic Pill [and I remember many of
them fondly], opens with the track “Driftin’ Back,” a swirling hypnotic number
that’s nearly twenty-eight minutes in length, and is sure to curl the edges of
mouth, creating a mile wide smile as the acid memories kick in.  Neil Young, along with his on-again off-again
band Crazy Horse sonically drift through the vaults, lifting old and creating
new musical riffs that are so magically charged you’ll have no other recourse
than to drift back, letting your head ride just above the water line, wondering
where the years have gone.  If you
weren’t part of the original psychedelic scene, then this is your chance to
stand with the sun at your back, cast your own stars across the heavens, get
lost in the paisley wanderlust that was 1969, and slip sideways into guitar
driven chords that build slowly into blossoms, then flowering into a thick
reverb drenched masterpiece.

The album is unqualified storytelling
brilliance, a taste of something I’d nearly forgotten.  Psychedelic Pill is epic, self assured,
connecting the past and the present like a thought that hangs in the air a
moment too long, almost long enough to reach out and touch, and then it’s
gone.  Psychedelic Pill reminds me that I
have people I haven’t seen in far to long, that my years haven’t been wasted,
and that this is truly the strangest life I’ve ever known.

Review made by Jenell Kesler / 2013

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http://psychedelicbaby.blogspot.com / 2013