It’s 1981 and Neil Young, confronting the shifting sounds and culture of a new era and wrenching family issues at home, turns to his trusty old bandmates Crazy Horse, plugs in and turns up the volume to deliver the final album under contact with Reprise Records.
“Re-ac-tor” is Young’s fourth studio album recorded with Crazy Horse and first real studio album of the new decade, considering that its predecessor, “Haws & Doves,” was padded with several leftover songs going back to at least 1974.
On paper, at least, the stars were aligned. Young had an excellent track record to date with Crazy Horse, with classic albums like “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere” from 1970 and 1979’s “Rust Never Sleeps.” With “Re-ac-tor,” we get an intriguing album title that evokes the specter of nuclear energy, which was very much in the public sphere at the time, and a simple but bold graphic design. (I hereby posit that “Hawks & Doves” and “Re-ac-tor” are Young’s strongest album covers of his long, storied career.) It’s one of those albums, frankly, that took me forever to actually listen to, and I have no idea why.
Sonically, “Re-ac-tor” certainly lives up to its raggedy Crazy Horse bonafides, with some vintage Neil Young guitar tone, loose playing and a ramshackle, rollicking feel. There are flourishes of synth sprinkled in the mix that drag the band’s sound into the new decade and hint at what’s to come next.
But like “Hawks & Doves” before it, the album has a slapped-together feel, with solid songs like “Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze” and the proto-punk “Shots” bookending shakier fare like “Motor City,” an uncomfortable flirtation with nativism, and “Rapid Transit,” which feels like an under-developed outtake that might’ve better fit as a more polished song on “Trans” a year later. “Get Back On It” plays with piano boogie-woogie and feels out of place (it might’ve fit on 1983’s “Everybody’s Rockin”), while “T-Bone” is an extended guitar riff in which Young repeats the refrain “Got mashed potato / Ain’t got no T-bone” ad nauseum until you begin to feel crazy.
As we discussed in the last entry, Young was preoccupied with family matters, with a son born with severe cerebral palsy — his second son diagnosed with the condition — just a few years earlier. This was also his final recording under contract with Reprise Records, so there’s a sense he was distracted and focused mostly on tying up loose ends.
A couple notes of interest: Two of the songs here would see an extended shelf life and would get different treatments. Compare versions of “Shots,” the proto-punk album cut versus the accoustic rendition as he performed it years before. I’ve also included a version of “Southern Pacific” Young would go on to perform with bluegrass backing band the International Harvesters.
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