Track Listing

1. Song X
2. Act Of Love
3. I'm The Ocean
4. Big Green Country
5. Truth Be Known
6. Downtown
7. What Happened Yesterday
8. Peace And Love
9. Throw Your Hatred Down
10. Scenery
11. Fallen Angel

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17606 in Music
• Released on: 1995-06-26
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

CD Description
No, THIS is the album on which Neil Young sounds like Neil Young again. Not RAGGED GLORY with its pulverising guitar catharses--that was the sound of rust waking up--and not SLEEPS WITH ANGELS, which was Neil Young using old tricks to eulogise a new dog. They're both important records, but MIRROR BALL is, plainly, a great one, an album of cosmic brooding and monstrously simple guitar riffs that ranks with his classic '70s discs.
Young's band for this unlikely masterpiece is Pearl Jam, who end up sounding less like their accomplished selves than like Young's longtime garage band, Crazy Horse, only denser, because there are more guitars here. Mostly,they bash out supradistorted, plodding power chords, opening up a loud space for Young to bang out his own riffs and solos and croon like a cosmic cowboy. The songs are typical Young epics, with verses so sadly pretty that there's no overriding need to change anything once they get going--quite often, he doesn't. "Act Of Love" is a continuous exchange of two two-chord sections--ABABAB etc.--either of which could make for a classic-rock standard on its own. And the 7-minute long "I'm The Ocean", a manifesto for a wandering poet that pulls in imagery of American Indians, cars and the O.J. trial, goes one simpler, being the same four chords repeated 62 times--no chorus, no bridge, and no call for either. Young and Pearl Jam rock with the excited, can't-stop energy of a first rehearsal take, which some of these tracks may well be--listen to Young call out "let me just play the groove for a minute" at the start of "Downtown".
Halfway through the album, Young goes to a pump organ for a haunting, 45-second song about "What Happened Yesterday". Much of what follows sounds like more notes on the death of Kurt Cobain, a journal Young started on SLEEPS WITH ANGELS. "Scenery" is a bitter look at stardom in America, but "Peace And Love", which invokes John Lennon, is a plea to live through this: "Stay for the children/You don't really want to go". It defies the rock ageing process that Young, at 49, can still speak in a voicethat resonates with Cobain's generation, who could well be his children ("People my age/They don't do the things I do",he notes in "I'm The Ocean"). But he inspired them, and they him, and MIRROR BALL finds him back at his game without having to fit into a new flannel shirt. He was already wearingone.

Customer Reviews

Life-changing, truly. For me.
Probably a record to change my life, this one. I got it way back in 95 when it came out, cos I heard Pearl Jam were on it. I was a massive Pearl Jam fan at the time. I can barely bring myself to listen to them now. Nevertheless, this record introduced me to Neil Young and inspired my musical tastes, my guitar playing and songwriting in so many ways.

I don't think I've heard chord changes as big as the ones on these songs since. The guitars sound HUGE, and the songs are so smple, yet as with most of Neil Young's work, they are highly emotional.

Now, I always assumed that the lead guitar on this record was played by Mike McCready, until that is I got the Merkinball EP which was released by Pearl Jam as a companion piece to this. One track from that, "I Got Id" (still my favourite Pearl Jam song) featured Neil Young on lead guitar... and the lead guitar sounded exactly like the lead guitar on Mirror Ball, and was just as good. Really, Young's playing was (and still is) amazing to me. It's so expressive, and has unique tone. And the fact that he's not trying to play fast really at all was very encouraging to me when I was just learning to play guitar. "Song X", "Big Green Country" and "Throw Your Hatred Down" all feature AWESOME guitar solos; equal to if not better than many of his other amazing solos: "Southern Man", "Like A Hurricane" etc, etc, etc...

I know this record isn't considered among Shakey's greatest by many purists, and I can understand why but I think it's brilliant. I love all the same Neil Young albums as everyone else, and I think this is as good as any of them.

Neil plays with Pearl Jam
This album marks Neil Young's collaboration with Pearl Jam. Neither a particularly engaging Neil Young album or Pearl Jam album, nevertheless this one gets by on the sheer forcefulness of the performances. Jack Irons and Jeff Ament keep the groove solid while Young and Stone Gossard whack out the riffs, and Pearl Jam axemeister Mike McCready sulks in the background, wondering why he doesn't get any soloes. The songs themselves are hypnotic and simple, usually consisting of repeated verses, lacking bridges or choruses to lighten the load. Only on "Peace and Love" is there a bridge section, and this was devised by Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, who must have dropped by to worship Mr. Young one afternoon. There are high points, such as the mighty "I'm the Ocean," and the daft "Downtown," but perhaps the most affecting songs are the two brief tunes performed by Young alone at his pump organ. In these melancholy viginettes, Young manages to convey the sense of loss he tries to create by bluff and bluster elsewhere, with a haunting eloquence. A solid collection.

One of the finest !!
It's a sunny day, only the open road, the nestling bosom of Mother Earth Welded with Neil and the Pearl Jam boys Force 10 attacking otic bashing wall, not the best but certainly in my top 5 Neil Young albums