Neil Young & Crazy Horse in the 'Barn'

The New Album is Barn. B-A-R-N, Barn.

Did anything ever make as much sense as a Neil Young record called Barn? Almost any album Neil Young has made, solo or with Crazy Horse, over the last the 50 years, could have been called Barn. Except for the blues album, This Note's for You, and probably not Trans, which in 1982 anticipated the computer era we're mud-deep in. But Barn. Let it roll off your tongue. Well, "Barn" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, it just kind of drops, four letters, one syllable. Barn. It was released December 10. Reprise Records.

Think about Talking Heads' album, More Songs About Buildings and Food. The building is a Barn. The food is hay. What's so difficult about that? Remember saying "hey!" in school, and the teacher saying, "hay is for horses?" You knew that. What you were saying was, "hey, man, what's happening?" "Hey" was happening; hay was not happening. "Hey Joe" was always happening. Hay is happening in Neil Young's barn.

In the opening "Song of the Seasons," you can just about smell the hay,…