Bimbadgen Estate, Hunter Valley
Saturday March 9, 2013 :
Anyone thinking they were going to get a dose of Neil Young as demure folkie at Bimbadgen Estate were to be sorely mistaken, and to those that proclaimed the set as ‘boring’ or lacking in ‘hits’, I say ‘pshaw’ to you.
For this was Neil Young in his lurching, swaggering rock and roll guise, backed by the legendary Crazy Horse (Billy Talbot, Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro and Ralph Molina) and, without any word of hyperbole, every minute of the set was a master class dynamics and building musical tension.
Melbourne’s The Drones brought their fair share of musical tension to the stage, playing a muscular and adventurous set made up predominantly of tracks from their latest album ‘I See Seaweed’ and, while the guitar acrobatics from Gareth Liddiard and Dan Luscombe, coupled with the driving, dirgy rhythm section of Mike Noga and Fiona Kitschin, may’ve been at odds with the winery crowd, they held their own and proved why every man and his dog is talking about this band at the moment.
As soon as Young and Co hit the stage, they lurched into a blistering rendition of ‘Love and Only Love’ from the Ragged Glory set, following it up with a brilliant run through of ‘Powderfinger’.
While a large portion of the set was devoted to Young’s latest album Psychedelic Pill – hey, this is one rocker that refuses to fade into that heritage artist glut, much of the Young and Crazy Horse canon was represented, with cuts from Rust Never Sleeps, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Harvest and Tonight’s The Night all getting a look in. They even pulled out the old Buffalo Springfield track ‘Mr Soul’ for good measure.
While the crowd applauded politely after the new songs, they quite rightly went absolutely bananas when they band pulled out more well-known fare. Most notably, when Young donned his acoustic guitar and harmonica for a beautiful version of perhaps his most well known song ‘Heart of Gold’, it was pretty obvious which Neil Young the majority of the crowd came to see.
‘Cinnamon Girl’, form the Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere album, still sounded as fresh as it did when recorded back in 1969 and the inclusion of a new track ‘Hole In The Sky’ and the unreleased ‘Singer Without A Song’ showed that Neil Young still has plenty to say and more than enough rock and roll chops to say it in.
While the extended version of ‘Fuckin’ Up’ complete with swirling feedback sections that would make My Bloody Valentine jealous may’ve alienated some of the quite middle-of-the-road audience, for me, it was a highlight of the set. It would’ve been THE highlight if Young didn’t decide to close the show with an awe-inspiring rendition of ‘Out Of The Blue’ from arguably one of the best live sets ever committed to tape, Rust Never Sleeps – a perfect end to a near-perfect set and the encore of ‘Roll Another Number’ was just the icing on the cake.
Reviewer: Stephen Bisset
Photographer: Kevin Bull
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Great review.
At Bimbadgen I was dead centre about 20 metres from stage – the sound was awesome, loud but pristine clear – the people around me were into it – but one jerk yelled out ‘play the old stuff” & the people nearby just howled him down and said if you want Harvest then go home and play the record 🙂
I also went to the Sydney show on Sunday and was on the front stage rail dead centre, in front of Neil & the Big microphone. He had the rust never sleeps stage with the huge fake speakers etc..A Day in the Life was played then the huge speaker covers were lifted and the big mike came down from the roof. The roadies etc were dressed as mad scientists & they had the Woodstock no rain chant etc midway thru the set, with the huge fan blowing all the paper across the stage. Same set list but different encore- Prisoners of Rock n Roll & then Opera Star.
The sound for me this time obviously was mostly from the stage speakers & my ears were still ringing well into Monday 🙂
But best of all was when Neil & Crazy Horse signed my On The Beach & Zuma vinyls at the SEC, prior to the soundcheck.
cheers, Gary