Weld

by William RuhlmannWeld, Neil Young's two-hour-plus double-CD chronicle of his 1991 Ragged Glory/Smell the Horse Tour with Crazy Horse, was received with only mild enthusiasm from Young's fans and rock critics, perhaps because it seemed redundant. Such warhorses as "Like a Hurricane" and "Cortez the Killer" were making their fourth appearances on a Young album, and the five songs from the Ragged Glory album were basically unchanged from their studio versions. Containing only 16 tracks, the album's songs averaged over seven and a half minutes in length, and that length was given over to extended guitar improvisations, which often were filled with feedback and distortion. Where Young's previous double live album, Live Rust, which bore some similarities to this one, was a career retrospective including some acoustic numbers, Weld was all electric rock with Crazy Horse. The one previously unreleased song was a Gulf War-era cover of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind," complete with gunshots and exploding bombs. In retrospect, Weld seems like an excellent expression of one part of Young's musical persona, putting some of his best hard rock material onto one album. [Initially, Weld was released in a 25,000 copy limited-edition called Arc Weld (Reprise 26746) containing a third disc made up of guitar feedback and called "Arc."]