Neil Young

You can’t help but hand it to Neil Young. At 63-years-old, four years removed from an aneurism, the man still has gas in the tank...well, metaphorically at least. Literally speaking, you’ll find no petrol on this alterna-fueled tribute to the 1959 Lincoln Continental that Neil retooled to run on alternative energy. Yup, Mr. Young is still out to make the world a better place and rock its damn socks off while he’s at it.

Should anyone else but the wild-eyed and half-crazy activist attempt to keep touring and releasing albums with this much hunger and exuberance, they’d be making fools of themselves. But this is, after all, the man who penned the line, "Hey hey, my my, rock n’ roll can never die." Sure, the phoned-in feel of boogie-based tunes like “Fuel Line,” “Get Behind The Wheel” and “Johnny Magic” might come across as largely unimaginative and are probably more the products of Young focusing more on his message than the music, Fork In The Road still shows signs on inspiration. “Off The Road” and the pedal-steel flavored “Light A Candle” showcase that classic, folksy slow-burn leftover from the bygone Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young days while “Just Signing A Song” and “Cough Up The Bucks” offer Neil’s trademark tuneful, yet gritty pre-grunge brand of rock.

The slide-driven shuffle of the title track reveals Young to be as stubbornly outspoken and brilliant as ever with lyrics like, "Download this. It sounds like shit." And "I’m a big rock star. My sales have tanked. I still got you; thanks." No, thank you, Neil.

—Ryan Ogle
04.26.09

It somehow is fitting that Fork in the Road arrived in stores a week after President Barack Obama announced his bail-out plan for the American automobile industry: it's Neil Young's one-man campaign to remind everybody what cars used to mean and what they should be again. Neil always has had a soft spot for cars -- he drove a hearse from Toronto to Los Angeles, immortalizing the vehicle in "Long May You Run" -- so this album-length motor manifesto couldn't be called unexpected, nor could its palpable, ever-flowing undercurrent of nostalgia be a surprise for a man who owns a toy train company. Plus, romanticizing the classic years of Detroit is natural; those big boats were gorgeous, so unlike the colorless, characterless sedans that rule the road these days. Neil knows this and knows that dependence on oil is crippling the culture, not to mention the environment, and is enough of an evangelist to cobble together his own green machine, putting an electric engine in a 1959 Lincoln Continental, driving the car to Washington and writing a whole album about the vehicle and its downtrodden times. Fittingly, Fork in the Road is like his Lincvolt: it has a new engine in an old body, so it has all of the classic contours but runs a little differently. The Lincvolt might be smooth and efficient, but Fork in the Road is charmingly clunky, a side effect of its quick creation and Young's hard-headedness. Neil might be writing records as quickly as a blogger these days but musically he's stuck in the past, never letting go of his chunky Les Paul and candied folk harmonies, embracing his status as an old crank so enthusiastically he happily presents himself as a crazy old coot on the album's cover. At times, he certainly does sound like the resident codger, snarling about the fading economy and how everybody's been downsized, good naturedly sneering "big rock star/my sales have tanked/I still got you/thanks" on the title track. Despite the undercurrent of auto nostalgia here, Young isn't living in the past and he's keenly aware of the present. This blend of dreamy thoughts of yesteryear, spitting fury over the present, and planning for the future gives Fork in the Road a bit of a kick that propels it through a few songs that aren't much more than a garage groove, but the whole thing benefits from its messiness; the loose ends make it feel alive. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide