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Hawks & Doves = Papersleeve = (CD)
This is a much-overlooked Neil Young classic. Released two years after his triumphant 'Rust Never Sleeps' trilogy of album, film and 'Live Rust' anthology, 'Hawks and Doves' returned to the pre-'Rust Never Sleeps' sounds of 'Comes a Time'. Although the CD closes with a number titled 'Hawks and Doves', it is clear that the title is also an apt description of the aural content of the complete work.
Originally released on vinyl in 1980, side one is the 'Doves' side. It features some lovely acoustic music, especially tracks one and three. 'Little Wing' (not the Jimi Hendrix composition) and 'Lost In Space' occupy a light, airy, stream-of-consciousness perch that few artists ascend to. The longest track on the disc, 'The Old Homestead', is actually a mid-1970's Neil composition. It runs almost eight minutes in length, and contains a great deal of difficult-to-make-sense-of imagery, such as "Just then the sound of hoofbeats was heard, and the sky was darkened by a prehistoric bird, who flew between the unfulfilled moon, and the naked rider to a telephone booth". Like abstract art, you could spend more than a few hours drawing meaning from this one. The closer on side one is 'Captain Kennedy'. I'm not anything near to being an expert in musical structure, but this song sure sounds like a knock-off of The Blind Fiddler, a traditional folk tune used by Stephen Stills on his 1991 'Stills Alone' CD.
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Similar artists: CRAZY HORSE, ALASDAIR ROBERTS
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