Sleeps With Angels

Neil’s mid-’90s masterpiece contains the darkest, most wounded music he’d released since 1975’s death-stained *Tonight’s the Night*, with his trusty backing band Crazy Horse providing queasy texture instead of their usual grungy roar. The ominous, rumbling title track is haunted—musically and spiritually—by Kurt Cobain\'s ghost, but Young also turns his bleak perspective to America at large: “Driveby” is an aching acoustic rendering of gang violence, while “Safeway Cart” is an eerily desolate portrait of homelessness framed by a haunting, hypnotic bassline.

Though it once again reunites him with Crazy Horse and includes such typical rock workouts as the lengthy "Change Your Mind" and the raucous "Piece of Crap," Sleeps With Angels is more musically varied than most of Neil Young's albums with his erstwhile backup group, ranging from piano-based ballads like the album opener, "My Heart," and closer, "A Dream That Can Last," which might have fit on After the Gold Rush, to the country-folk "Train of Love," which sounds like a leftover from Harvest Moon, and the hard-edged grunge of the title track.