In some ways, On The Beach is quite a concise statement - it's all over in just eight songs, and most of them about average length - but it also hints at the epic, that latter sense enhanced by the long tail-off engendered by the way that its last three songs, "On The Beach" itself, "Motion Pictures" and "Ambulance Blues", are not only all slowed-down rockist meditations, and collectively stretch longer than the first five. The legibility of both of those impulses in the album, in fact, probably has something to do with the way that each of the eight individual songs making up the record has its own distinct sound and feel, from the relatively straight up Young-style country rock of "Walk On" through the Wurlitzer-led tenderness of "See The Sky About To Rain" and "Revolution Blues" ' fiery guitar-led urgency to the stripped-back banjo-and-dobro sketch that is "For The Turnstiles" and then Shakey's fluid take on the blues, "Vampire Blues", before that final trio, the title track, almost unbearably stark, "Motion Pictures" more gently wistful, and then finally "Ambulance Blues", a remarkable, extended rumination that closes things on a restrained, suspended note.
What makes it cohere is simply the unforced and unmistakeable sensibility that Young brings to everything he does - it would be a mischaracterisation, a category error even, to call it 'vision', because it seems rather like a natural, almost unconscious tapping into some common experience or feeling that then resonates down the line...whatever it is, On The Beach has it. It touches something timeless and real.
