Landing on Water: Neil Young’s Machines Cover the Writing

“Landing on Water” is Neil Young’s 1986 attempt to bring his writing together with the machines and polish of mid-1980s studio rock. Ten tracks, 40 minutes. The idea was to bring his sound into the present. The execution covers it up instead.

Setting the Terms

The rhythm hits hard and often, and the production relies on that force rather than on Young’s guitar or singing. One major review described the record’s central problem this way: the beat sits above the tracks and covers nearly everything beneath it, pushing Young’s singing so far back it is nearly lost in the mix. That description fits the album from start to finish. Nearly every choice on the record follows from that same struggle between force and voice, and the balance rarely turns back in the singer’s favor.

Working Through the Tracks

“Weight of the World” opens the record and sets the terms — heavy rhythm, a thin voice pushed to the back, a song straining to be heard under its own mix. It is a rough start, and the record never fully recovers from it.

“Violent Side” and “Touch the Night” follow the same shape: decent bones, covered by a bright, hard surface that works against them instead of lifting them up. The songs have shape and intent, but the mix keeps getting in the way of both.

“Hippie Dream” stands apart. One major review called it “the only one that offers the promise of being one of Young’s better efforts,” and on this record that is not small praise — it is the one song where the writing comes through clearly instead of getting lost under the weight of the production.

The rest of the record — “Bad News Beat,” “People on the Street,” “Hard Luck Stories,” “I Got a Problem,” “Pressure,” and the closing “Drifter” — runs together. None of these songs are bad on their own terms. None of them leave much of a mark either. They fill out the record’s remaining time without adding anything new or worth returning to, and by the end the listener struggles to recall where one track ended and the next began.

Numbers Behind the Record

• Artist: Neil Young
• Album: Landing on Water
• Year: 1986
• Tracks: 10
• Running time: 40 minutes
• Score from one major review: 2 of 5

“The only one that offers the promise of being one of Young’s better efforts is ‘Hippie Dream.'”

Final Word

“Landing on Water” is a record working against itself. Young’s instincts as a writer still show through on “Hippie Dream,” and turn up in pieces on “Violent Side” and “Weight of the World,” but the production keeps getting in the way of both.

The remaining songs do not even try to fight back against that weight — they simply take up space on the record. This stands as one of the weakest points in Young’s work from the 1980s, an experiment that never settles into a finished song, and one that leaves the listener wishing the writing had been given more room to reach the surface. What remains, in the end, is a record caught between its maker’s instincts and its own machines, unable to fully choose between the two.

1986 albums · album review · classic rock · Neil Young · studio rock