100 favourite songs: #50: "On The Beach" - Neil Young

I was tiredly walking back to the city from the St Kilda Festival one year, unable to bear the prospect of the crush of the end-of-day trams, summer everywhere in the air; I happened to be listening to On The Beach, and it was just exactly right for my state of mind — that was, I think, the first time that Young’s music had really spoken to me. Then came that strange, poignant time at the tail end of last year when everything was ending and Neil was the soundtrack to it all — On The Beach was a big part of that, too.

I need a crowd of people, but I can’t face them day to day …

Lots of great songs on it, but it’s the album’s crushingly sad centrepiece, “On The Beach” itself, which I’ve most taken to heart, Neil’s voice wavering as the instruments do the same, whether beneath the anomie-infused lyrics or (in the case of the guitar) coming to prominence with a ruminative, almost deathly stark solo, trailing off into the all-consuming plod of the bass and percussion. ‘Crushingly sad’, I said a minute ago, and it is that, but it’s also impeccably restrained with it — which, of course, adds to rather than detracting from the overall effect. There’s no simple emotional wallowing or messy splurging of angst here — but rather a bleak, almost peaceful holding-in of oneself as the world keeps on turning.

Though my problems are meaningless, that don’t make them go away …