Lamentably, these days there’s a glut of earnest, singer-songwriter strummers providing music to do the ironing to. Having been exposed ad nauseum to these perennially forgettable ditties, so calculated in their inoffensiveness as to be somewhat obscene, the richness of After The Goldrush is a joy. Over the years, the gentle acoustic balladry exemplified by this album has been endlessly rehashed and diminished, so returning to the intensity of the source is something of a shock to the ears.

Released in 1970, After The Goldrush appears to address the post-sixties comedown with a litany of earnest subjects, not just affairs of the heart; the title track contains the lyric “look at Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s”, a prophetic ecological statement that is chronologically updated by Young when singing live.

Equally, Southern Man addresses the lynching of black people in the American South and as such is a distant cousin of Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit. Whilst the song isn’t quite as devastatingly direct in its imagery as Holiday’s (“Pastoral scene of the gallant south/The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth/Scent of magnolia, sweet and fresh/Then the sudden smell of burning flesh”) its allusions are disturbing nonetheless: ”I heard screaming and bullwhips cracking…”

A rare rocker on a gentle album, this impassioned polemic highlights Young’s electric guitar playing. His soloing is fragmented and disjointed at first, as if he’s picked up his guitar for the first time after a six month hiatus, warming up before his fingers regain their old dexterity. This act of veering from amateur to virtuoso in the same solo would be redone, removed or glossed over by many producers but it remains a charming piece of idiosyncratic musicianship.

Elsewhere, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, supposedly written for friend Graham Nash (of CSNY fame) after his break-up with Joni Mitchell, shows how affecting a simple melody can be, bolstered with breathtaking vocal harmonies that could force even the Beatles or Simon & Garfunkel to reappraise the art form. Anyone who knows this song via Saint Etienne’s electronic 90’s cover will be stunned by the intensity of the original.

There’s no respite either. Birds, an almost lullaby-like relationship post-mortem, is backed by the same celestial choir that illuminates Only Love Can Break Your Heart whereas I Believe In You, yet another achingly beautiful elegy to doomed romance, ends with crashing piano chords atop the canny acoustic and electric guitar interplay.

Produced by David Briggs, a man reputed for a using a direct, low-tech approach to force the best from musicians and create a live feel, this is a very pure sounding record; subtle, gentle and beautifully mixed. Acoustic guitars strummed nearly forty years ago actually sound like guitars, instead of being treated with treble and effects to produce a radio-friendly “brightness”. This is not a Sergeant Pepper exercise in pushing back the boundaries of recorded sound, rather a heartfelt album that is beautiful in its simplicity, accessibility and warmth.

Release date: 19/09/70
Artist website: http://www.neilyoung.com/
Label: Reprise

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