Neil Young Made a Perfect 10 with After the Gold Rush, and 56 Years On It Still Sounds That Way

Neil Young put out After the Gold Rush in 1970, and it plays like a man trying on every voice available to him at once. Quiet guitar work, country, hard rock and piano ballad sit side by side across 11 tracks and 35 minutes. The record does not try to bring these modes together into one shape. It just moves through them, fast, with nothing wasted.

By The Numbers

• Artist: Neil Young
• Album: After the Gold Rush
• Year: 1970
• Tracks: 11
• Total running time: 35 minutes
• Pitchfork score: 10.0/10

Side One, Track by Track

“Tell Me Why” opens the record on plain guitar and high harmony, setting the terms early. “After the Gold Rush” follows, a piano piece built around a strange, quiet melody that gives the album its title and sits at the heart of the whole record. “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” turns that quiet into something closer to comfort, a plainly stated ballad that has lasted longer in memory than most songs it was compared to at the time.

Then “Southern Man” arrives and changes the record’s mood entirely. Its electric guitar and its direct lyrical aim make it the fiercest thing here, and to these ears it stands as the strongest single track on the album. “Till the Morning Comes” closes the first side in under a minute and a half, a fragment rather than a song, but it works as a breath before the turn.

Side Two, Track by Track

Side two opens with a cover, “Oh, Lonesome Me,” which Young takes down in pace and hollows out until it sounds like his own. “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” keeps that mood, one of the album’s most quoted tracks for good reason. The rest of the side — “Birds,” “When You Dance I Can Really Love,” “I Believe in You” and closer “Cripple Creek Ferry” — moves faster and looser, rounding out the record’s reach without needing individual attention.

What Matters Most

1. “Southern Man”
2. “After the Gold Rush”
3. “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”
4. “Don’t Let It Bring You Down”
5. “Tell Me Why”
6. “Oh, Lonesome Me”

The Verdict

Pitchfork hears in the record a writer ready to take on more ground, working across many styles at once with ease. The magazine finds in Young, with his confidence grown, a sense of an artist covering the whole body of American song. That reading has held up well over decades of listening.

This is Neil Young at his most complete, an artist moving between anger and tenderness without losing either. Nothing here feels like filler.

1970 albums · album review · classic rock · Neil Young · Southern Man