An unlikely masterpiece from the legendary musician Neil Young has been singled out as his 1990s “masterpiece”. Young’s work throughout the ’90s has some all-time great pieces like Mirror Ball, Ragged Glory, and Harvest Moon. But none of that mighty trio is considered the best of Young’s work. Fans believe the songwriter has some better efforts elsewhere in his considerable ’90s output, with a fan taking to the Neil Young subreddit to name it as his “best” of the decade.
Fans were quick to observe that Young turned it up in the 1990s, a vastly better decade for his work than the preceding 1980s. Young had been signed to Geffen Records for much of the ’80s and released some of his most experimental work to date. The likes of Trans and Everybody’s Rockin’ were poorly received on release, but had Young tinkering with studio styles which he had previously not tried.
The fan wrote: “Sleeps with Angels is a masterpiece. Every song flows beautifully. Change Your Mind is such an epic song. The watery guitar, around five minutes in, lives rent-free in my mind. And Piece of Crap is a great way to close.” Other fans agreed with this assessment and singled out other tracks from Sleeps With Angels that are up there as one of his best.
Another listener wrote: “Driveby is up there with Helpless and Powderfinger in the Neil canon.” A third shared: “Prime of Life is brilliant.” Others were keen to share their memories of listening to Sleeps with Angels. One person shared: “I grew up in a pretty remote part of Australia and we used to do long drives through the desert to surf these reefs in the middle of nowhere.
“Then we’d drive home in the evening rolling smokes and listening to Sleeps With Angels while the flat landscape whizzed past the window. It was the most perfect soundtrack, and it’s an enduring memory of my youth. Five stars.”
Another added: “I love this album. It’s probably my second favourite Neil Young album overall behind After the Gold Rush. If Harvest Moon is the 90s sequel to Harvest, I feel like Sleeps With Angels is the 90s sequel to After the Gold Rush, with a bit of On the Beach and Tonight’s the Night thrown in for good measure. Just an incredible album.”
Young’s work on Sleeps with Angels was hailed at the time as a moving rock record. The title track was written as a tribute to Kurt Cobain, the Nirvana frontman who had died just a few months before the release of the album. Young has been elusive about the meaning within the album and about specific songs, saying in 1995 that he wouldn’t feel comfortable discussing what these songs meant to him.
He told MOJO Magazine: “Sleeps With Angels has a lot of overtones to it, from different situations that were described in it – a lot of sad scenes. I’ve never really spoken about why I made that album. I don’t want to start now. I just don’t want to talk about that. That’s my decision. I’ve made a choice not to talk about it, and I’m sticking to it.”
He would reiterate this stance again to SPIN Magazine, adding: “I’m not doing anything with that album. It stands on its own. That’s why I made the record. Too sensitive of a subject to isolate comments on. When you speak to someone who can write things down, you have to remember that they only write what they select. And it appears next to something that they can’t control, like an ad. And then that article can be quoted, and over time…I’ve seen the way things happen.”
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