1. Mr. Soul
2. A Child's Claim to Fame
3. Everydays*
4. Expecting to Fly*
5. Bluebird
6. Hung Upside Down
7. Sad Memory*
8. Good Time Boy
9. Rock & Roll Woman
10. Broken Arrow
A-
So before I listened to this album, all I knew about Buffalo Springfield was that they sang "For What It's Worth", and that Neil Young was involved somehow. So this was a pleasant surprise. I don't think it's as great an album as some people have made it out to be, and it doesn't contain anything to rival "For What It's Worth", but it's a pleasant enough listen with a few great tracks scattered through it.
The usual late 60s nonsense is of course present. There are lots of Byrds-derived fuzz guitars playing skronky, scribbly solos. The lyrics are frequently mystifying and more than a little pretentious. And of course many of the songs feature multiple time changes and different sections (most evidently on Young's "Broken Arrow", which attempts to capture the whole range of human emotion through multiple sections bridged by sound collages, but mostly just comes-off as melancholy and somewhat confusing).
Things open with "Mr. Soul", driven by a warped rendering of the riff from the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction". It's a good song, musically, but it also features Neil Young's worst traits as a song writer - self-righteous anger and pretentious, baffling lyrics. I think it's about the trappings of fame, or how people perceive you, or something. I don't know. Anyway, after that is the pleasant country rock song "A Child's Claim to Fame", which could easily be by the Eagles. Then there's "Everydays", a gorgeous, mellow, bass-driven jazz rock number about... something? Alienation? The way days blur into each other? What the hell does "Soft within the wayward things /Of ecstasy, the sound of trees /Most any breeze, what a baby sees" mean? I guess I'm missing the point - it's supposed to convey emotion, and a rush of images. Anyway, it's a lovely song.
"Expecting to Fly", another Young composition, is probably the best song on the album. It's a lovely acoustic ballad featuring lush, complex string arrangements. It's also clearly about something - saying goodbye to your lover when a relationship ends, as they set-off expecting bigger and better things. It's very pretty, and points the way towards the lush soft-rock that Young would dally with in the early 70s.
After that, "Bluebird" and "Hung Upside Down" are nice enough rock songs. "Bluebird" shifts through several different styles, from the Byrds to sounding like something by Love ("A House Is Not a Motel"?) before closing with a pretty bit of bluegrass. I don't much care for "Hung Upside Down", though. It has a somewhat harsher flavour that's out of place on what is a pretty mellow album.
"Sad Memory", I really like. It completely lacks the ambition and complexity that threatens to sink this album, instead being a gentle acoustic ballad with minimal accompaniment and direct lyrics, carried almost entirely by Richie Furay's lovely voice. Some might dismiss it as a bit simple, or not up to the standards of the rest of the album, but I found that when listening to ...Again through several times it provided a welcome reprieve and a pleasant counterpoint from all the "progressive" nonesense. The next song, "Good Time Boy", is also a Furay composition, and it's a fun (if inconsequential) soul stomper sung by the band's drummer, and featuring a dynamite horn section. Purists might complain that it doesn't really have a place on this album, but I think ...Again is defined by its eclecticism.
The last two songs are "Rock & Roll Woman" and "Broken Arrow". The first is a very pretty rock song about, well, a rock & roll woman. It's the usual mix of drippy metaphors and lines about looking into people's eyes, but it's pretty. "Broken Arrow", as already stated, is probably the most ambitious song on the album - and I guess it mostly succeeds. I've just never been one for multi-part mini epics, and at the time I don't think Young had matured enough as a songwriter to successfully tackle the different issues he was addressing - basically, a few brief snapshots of a band, a young boy, and a royal wedding, which all seem to be trying to say something but I'm still not sure what.
I think the main problem I had with this album is the lyrics. They sound great when they're being sung, and I guess if you're the kind of person who likes to pore over lyrics sheets searching for hidden meaning, or who just enjoys a pretty bit of imagery, you'll quite like them. But I personally think that Buffalo Springfield was composed of some very talented musicians who couldn't quite match their lyrical ambition to their talent. Of course this was early days for all the members, and it's possible they'd go on to bigger and better things (I will tell you when I get round to their later albums). Of course, Neil Young would soon mature into one of the finest singer-songwriters of all time, so I guess I can cut him some slack here.
Probably, though, I am missing the point. The strength of this album lies in its brilliance as music, and it was obviously massively influential in that respect. There were hints of this sort of music earlier in the List, but this album really seems to be stretching the possibilities of rock music. Although it wasn't released till October of 67 (why the Book doesn't list these albums chronologically is beyond me) and so possibly I will discover, as I have before, that what sounds revolutionary was actually ripping-off something that came out in February of the same year.
It probably also doesn't help that I no longer smoke cannabis. Trying to adequately appreciate a lot of this music while straight is going to be a recurring problem, I can see.
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