Forum

Interesting concept ... I only just started having a look at this, myself.

Whaddya think of it ?

http://fast.wistia.com/embed/iframe/6ecacfd21f

cosmicmechanic wrote:

Interesting concept ... I only just started having a look at this, myself.

Whaddya think of it ?

http://fast.wistia.com/embed/iframe/6ecacfd21f

Someone must have thought this was a good idea................I don't.................I didn't watch it all.........well lifes too short and at 41minutes not many people will watch it all the way through I guess.

It's not so much a promotional video, more a short feature film. I don't know what they were thinking???

Maybe I will force myself to watch it all (and die of boredom) and try to understand what they were trying to do. Then again maybe I will not bother. :S :dry: :huh:


Tom N.

Edit: Ok watched it all, against my better judgement. I get what they are trying to do. I think I would rather see concert footage than this to be honest. I felt that the bits before each song were just getting in the way. Walking past those doors each time. What were they smoking before they made this? The whole video is just a bit slow and what about those Cheap sets. I find the concept just a bit bizarre! . Ok this is just my view and maybe others loved it.

On a positive note: I didn't die of boredom and there is some great archive footage in there.

Tom N.

tombo1230 wrote:

... I didn't die of boredom and there is some great archive footage in there.

Tom, I think that this is less than a rave review, right ? :side:

I found I was wrong thinking that all the album's tunes are in the video.
Two of the them are absent, and the rest are good-sized samples, not complete tracks.

Neil Young did put up all tracks of his new albums on his site in recent years, but now it seems that he has adopted a different approach.
It's also worth remembering that the real album sounds so much better than this limited-quality web audio.

Anyway, I finally got my own opinion worked out about this.

To me, this video is a crafty way of ratcheting up the multi-media experience, introducing each song with artwork by artist Shepard Fairey. Here's a link to some details about that collaboration:
http://www.details.com/blogs/daily-deta ... id=twitter

Shepard Fairey's images are an important key to understanding and reflecting on each song's meaning and I find that the video's silly silent-movie wandering around in the art gallery between songs is just distracting. I kept waiting for a punch line that never came.

The album is made up of traditional tunes that morph into a kind of protest album, because of the tone of performance and sometimes because the lyrics we are used to hearing have been prettied up, and NY uses the original lyrics, which can surprising.

Throughout it all is the feeling of hardship, but also that there is hope for the future ... even "God Save the Queen" is used in a clever way to do this.

The tunes missing from the video are "Wayfarin' Stanger" and "She'll be Comin' Round the Mountain" ... well done, also.

Neil Young has been known to put out some self-indulgent albums, but I don't think that's the case here.
I listened to the complete album in a bit better audio quality on SoundCloud, and that convinced me that it's a solid work. I'll be getting it soon.

The reviews I've seen are far from unanimous, of course !

Pierre

Hi Pierre,
I just think a video like this is a little bit self indulgent. I thought the sets were tacky and unconvincing and the black and white intro parts were way too long and really, why were they needed? Too much time was spent sitting on a boring sometimes graphic that did little. There's nothing wrong with the actual songs. This just seems like a bad idea that was funded by the guy who had the bad idea and nobody told him so. This is just my view on it, backed up by 30yrs working on videos and tv programmes for a living.

The video wouldn't put me off though, I may actually buy the album. I also plan to read the article on the collaboration.

My two pence worth.

Tom N.