Live at Massey Hall

Reprise

Live at Massey Hall 1971 is the yang to the yin of last year’s Live at the Fillmore East. Where that 1970 Crazy Horse-accompanied show, the first release in Neil Young’s long-delayed Archives series, focused on his blistering electric side, the Massey Hall set spotlights the loner. Splitting his time between acoustic guitar and piano, the solo Young is at his most intimate for the Toronto audience, during one of the most creative spurts of his career. Even “Cowgirl in the Sand” and “Down by the River,” two of the crunchiest tracks on that first album with Crazy Horse, are laid bare here.

Listening now to these vintage performances of “Ohio,” “Helpless” and “Old Man” (the latter introduced as “a song about my ranch—I have a ranch now, lucky me”), so ingrained in classic-rock culture, it’s often difficult to reconcile that most of these songs, so fully formed, were still new, that some had not yet been recorded for albums. Two, “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” and “Tell Me Why,” had appeared on 1970’s After the Gold Rush, but five songs, including the harrowing “The Needle and the Damage Done,” would not be released until ’72’s Harvest, and others wouldn’t show up for anther year or two after that. Already, they felt like classics.

Pristinely recorded, Massey Hall presents a young Young, simultaneously upbeat and fragile, restlessly seeking, but already world-weary. In a recent interview, Bob Dylan praised Young’s omnipresent melodic gift and said, “There’s nobody in his category.” Even as far back as 1971, that was apparent.

Roses & Clover

Brushfire

The members of ALO have been playing together for well over a decade, but it’s really only in the past few years that the rising Bay Area stars have truly hit their stride. Since forming in high school, the group has fashioned itself a horn-laced funk band, a trance-infused dance band, and a SoCal college party band. But, as Roses & Clover quickly proves, ALO’s true calling is writing the same sort of breezy, organic pop music that catapulted their college classmate and current label president, Jack Johnson, to fame. And, if the group’s Brushfire debut, Fly Between Falls, introduced the new ALO, Roses & Clover perfects its latest persona, thanks to choice tracks such as the Hawaiian-like “Plastic Bubble” and the Marvin Gaye-influenced “Shine.” The group hints at its past too, spicing up cuts like “Monday” with electronica teases which will no doubt be stretched out onstage. And, like Fly Between Falls, if Roses & Clover doesn’t turn ALO into a national attraction, it will certainly help a handful of college kids get laid along the way.

Beyond

Fat Possum

From the opening notes of J. Mascis’ fuzzy distorted guitar on Dinosaur Jr.’s new album, Beyond, the band defies the notion that reunions are rarely this good. After a 20 year absence of the original lineup, Dinosaur Jr. has returned just as triumphantly as they dissolved, with an album that is everything they once were and ultimately what they have evolved into. Tightly wrapped melodic songs trade time with muddy and murky mixes with little separation, as the trio of J., bassist Lou Barlow and drummer Murph merge into one. There are hints of the past, such as “Crumble,” which sounds like an outcast from the Where You Been era, but the album is more aptly a perfect marriage of the sludge rock of their youth with the epic pop that Mascis mastered in the later, Barlow-less incarnations of the band. It is still clearly the J. show as his solos live and breathe all over the album, but there is also the sense of the total dissipation of the angst an power struggle that once led to the band’s extinction, such as on the Barlow-penned and fronted “Back to Your Heart.” This is a phenomenal return to form from a giant, not willing to retire its legacy to the status of progenitor: There is too much noise still to be made.

Prog

Heads Up

Fashion a flipbook out of pages from your older brother’s scrapbook—album covers from the ‘70s, toy instruments, inside jokes—and the insistent whirr of pages thumping along would sound a little like power-piano trio, The Bad Plus’ fifth album, Prog—and not just because of the Rush and Bowie covers. And as they return to the more open-minded world of indie labeldom, there’s a more mischievous vibe at work here. The first sign things are a little darker comes when pianist Ethan Iverson bends a few key notes in the first chorus of the band’s take on “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” Bassist Reid Anderson toys with convention, too, trading in his usual womblike basslines and soft crescendos for the most addictive rock song the trio has ever recorded. “Physical Cities” propels itself onward using the “Iron Man”-like weight of its own rhythm, leading to one of many frenetic and stormy climaxes. A few rays of melodic sun peek through as well, like in the loping “Thriftstore Jewelry.” And the oeuvre ends on an up note, with the triumphant return of the group’s 2004 album, Give’s “1972 Bronze Medalist” character, who finally wins the “1980 World Championship” in an amped-up finale that nods to some nostalgia TBP created all by themselves.