Upon first listening to Neil Young’s new album, Fork in the Road, one gets the feeling that the artist was on a personal quest to find the most unexciting ideas and lyrics and lump them together as an album. Neil Young’s new album is about cars. More specifically, it’s about electric cars.

Neil Young is a living legend with tons of brilliant songs under his belt. Why has he decided to write boring, half-hearted political music? And why, of all of the possible political issues he could include in songs, has he chosen to promote electric transportation? My theory is that he has gone quite insane. All of this topical stuff seemed to start pretty soon after his brain aneurysm… you be the judge. Just take a look at the album’ s cover photo. Do those eyes look rational? I wonder if he even knows where he is.

Well, I guess I don’t really think he’s insane, and I really have no idea what a brain aneurysm does. Come to think of it, he can’t be crazy. There is no way a crazy person could write such boring music, such monotonous propaganda. We have recordings of Syd Barrett and Charles Manson to prove that.

So I guess the idea behind this album is based on Neil’s ’59 Lincoln Continental, which he converted to a fully electric vehicle. That’s a nice environmental gesture, but most certainly not a theme for a rock and roll album. When considering the essence of rock ‘n’ roll, I can’t say that a Prius pops into mind. If anything, rock is more defined by gurgling gasoline waiting to become dirty black exhaust. My intent is not to promote gas guzzlers; in fact, I hate all breeds of cars. I’m just trying to point out that electric cars are an all around crappy idea for a rock album.

Listening to this album was one of the most tedious things I’ve done in a really long time. It doesn’t let up. Every word is devoted to this electric car thing. One song ends with Neil preaching about “the awesome power of electricity,” and the next starts in about the nasty mistake of a fuel-powered car. It is nauseating.

Neil Young used to make art. Now he just writes albums that have the same feeling a half-assed blog. I mean, take Dylan, the father of the protest song, for example. He recently came out with a song in which he admits, “I used to care, but things have changed.” I don’t know, maybe Neil could learn a thing or two. Everybody knows that giving up is a million times more elegant than caring… I just hope he breaks down his soapbox soon. I have some faith; I think he still has a couple descent albums left in him.