Tonight's the Night [LP]

Neil Young & Crazy Horse: Neil Young (vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano, vibraphone); Danny Whitten (vocals, guitar); Ralph Molina (vocals, drums); Billy Talbot (bass).
Additional personnel: Nils Lofgren (vocals, guitar, piano); Ben Keith (vocals, pedal steel guitar, slide guitar); Jack Nitzsche (piano); Tim Drummond (bass); Kenny Buttrey (drums).
Producers: Neil Young, David Briggs, Tim Mulligan, Eliot Mazer.
Let's get a popular misconception out of the way. The rap about this being one of Young's darkest, most harrowing albums is utter nonsense, perpetuated by critics who spend more time reading each other than listening to the music. TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT is dedicated to Young's guitarist Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry, who died shortly before this recording was made, and the title cut details that very subject, but the darker moments here are leavened by a generous share of self-parodic humor and general Neil Young loopiness.
Sad, tender ballads like "Borrowed Tune," (itself not without humor) rub shoulders with hearty rockers like "Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown." Several tunes find Young and Crazy Horse exploring hard-edged country-rock with their collective tongue stuck firmly in the cheek, as on "Roll Another Number." Young's voice reels sadistically and purposefully out of tune, cutting through the arrangements like strategically placed barbed-wire (and providing a template for the work of Will Oldham/Palace two decades later). Sardonic, taunting, mercilessly self-deprecating, often downright funny, TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT is no gloomfest, but a multi-faceted, full-bodied classic.