Ragged Glory: Loud, Loose and Better for It

Neil Young & Crazy Horse made “Ragged Glory” to sound like a band playing loud with the machines running and nothing put right after. That is exactly what it is. The record is not polished and does not want to be. It is Young’s clearest statement in years that noise, repetition and volume can carry as much weight as any set of words.

The Sound of the Room

The album opens with “Country Home,” seven minutes of steady guitar that sets the terms for everything after it. “White Line” follows at under three minutes, a quick, plain song that acts as a breath before the record gets rough again.

Then comes “F*!#in’ Up,” 5:53 of plain, driving rock and, to these ears, one of the record’s high points. It is followed by “Over and Over,” 8:27 long, which does exactly what its title says: it repeats the same riff until the repetition becomes the point.

“Love to Burn” pushes past ten minutes. It is one of two tracks on the album that cross that mark, and it earns the length — the playing between Young and Crazy Horse together reaches out without losing shape.

Side Two and the Long Songs

“Farmer John” and “Mansion on the Hill” keep the middle of the record moving. “Farmer John” is a cover, short and easy at 4:12. “Mansion on the Hill,” at 4:46, stands out as one of the tracks that best shows the album’s mood — strange, funny, full of life, in the spirit of the praise the record received at the time.

“Days That Used to Be” runs 3:50, a plain, direct song set between two much longer tracks. That contrast matters. Without it, the last part of the album would run together into one long wall of guitar.

“Love and Only Love” runs 10:18, the longest track on the record. In this writer’s view, it belongs alongside “F*!#in’ Up,” “Over and Over,” “Love to Burn,” “Mansion on the Hill” and “Country Home” as one of the album’s strongest moments. The closer, “Mother Earth (Natural Anthem),” runs 5:11 and ends the record on a heavy, quiet note that sits apart from how it began.

What the Noise Adds Up To

One review from the time praised the record as coarse and savage, funny and wild. That line sums up the record’s whole approach in only a few words. The better point here is simply that Young pushed hard into the sound he and Crazy Horse had built together for two decades by 1990, and let it run.

The album does not chase new sounds. It does not need to.

Some listeners will find the long pieces — three tracks past eight minutes, two of them past ten — more than they want from a single sitting. That is a fair complaint. But the length is not filler. It is the sound of a band that knows exactly what it does well and refuses to cut it short for anyone’s convenience.

By the Numbers

• Artist: Neil Young & Crazy Horse
• Year: 1990
• Track count: 10
• Total running time: 62 minutes
• Longest track: “Love and Only Love” — 10:18
• Shortest track: “White Line” — 2:59
• AllMusic score: 5/5

Running Order

“Ragged Glory” is not a subtle record and it does not pretend to be. It is Neil Young and Crazy Horse doing the one thing they do better than almost anyone else — playing loud, playing loose, and letting the songs run as long as they need to. Each of the tracks singled out here, from “Country Home” through “Love and Only Love,” earns that attention on its own terms. The record asks for patience across its longest pieces and repays it every time.

This is a strong Crazy Horse record, not polished by design and better for it.

album review · classic rock · Crazy Horse · Neil Young · Ragged Glory