Oh, to be Young again in 'Greendale'

What more can one say about the illustrious Neil Young? His high-pitched crooning is well known among hippies and true-blue country folk alike; his work with Crazy Horse (this time without rhythm guitarist Frank "Poncho" Sampedro) has been groundbreaking and influential to say the least. And of course, he has done an excellent job releasing a live album (with bonus DVD), something which is hard to master: Greendale sounds neither too live, nor too much like a studio album.\nOn Greendale, Young creates a portrait of the town Greendale and its inhabitants, making the individual portraits of characters such as Grandpa, the Bandit, and the Double E diner come together to form a familiar and beautiful picture. The most beautiful moment on the album is at the end of "Bandit," in which Crazy Horse, perfectly subdued, accompanies Young and guitar while he sings "someday you'll find everything you're looking for" to the bandit described in the song, for a moment that is at once uplifting and elegiac.\nThe whole album can be described using those words -- uplifting and elegiac -- as "Be the Rain" features the sun shouting through a megaphone about the destruction of the planet, and in the last song, "Sun Green," a young female protester leaves Greendale after Grandpa's funeral. In this way, Greendale is understandable and circular in the most rudimentary way -- life and death come full circle.