If you don't count live albums and other various material,
Greendale is Young's 30th solo album. 30 friggin albums! Most artists are
lucky if they can get to 10 anymore. Which isn't to say they've all been
good. In fact, truth be told, only about half are great, and the other half are anywhere
between just slightly listenable, and damn near unbearable. But at least
Young has tried everything once whether it worked or not.

With Greendale, Young, along with one of the best backing bands he's ever worked with, Crazy Horse, try to tackle a book's worth of material in 10 songs. Book meaning
Young has basically written the equivalent of a book with fictional
characters and a fictional town called Greendale they all live in, and is
trying to adapt his book into music. There is Grandpa, Grandma, they're
Granddaughter Sun, and their Grandson Jed who just shot a highway patrol cop
named Carmichael on the edge of town. The meat of the album deals with how
the family deals with the ordeal of having a relative that is in the local
jail for murder, and also how they deal with the media, and other aspects of
their life. Trust me when I tell you that Greendale is not an easy listen. I
still haven't been able to listen to all 80 minutes of it all at once. And
the fact that you get the sense that chapters are missing from the story
doesn't help either. You know that Young has a lot to say, but some of the
stories in the songs just feel so damn vague. At least with Greendale, it's
the best that Crazy Horse has sounded since 1990's Ragged Glory. Overall a
good album, but after a few listens, in the back of your mind you wish that
Young would have just made a double or triple album and just told the whole
story to begin with.