If [After the Goldrush] had been anybody's album but Neil Young's, it would have been an achievement. Indeed, it may seem to be an achievement to that unfortunate majority who know Neil Young only from his work with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and not from the Buffalo Springfield or from his two previous solo albums. After The Goldrush is pleasant enough, but it lacks intensity and genius….

[It is] the first Neil Young album to be anything less than brilliant….

Neil Young could be the most underrated, overlooked, and unjustly ignored record in rock and roll. It is overproduced, overarranged, and grossly overdone, yet for all its excesses, it nevertheless contains some of the most subtle, most perceptive, and most inventive songwriting in contemporary music. As composer, Neil Young revealed himself to be extraordinarily original and daring, and odd rhythm shifts and offbeat phrasing abound. Similarly, the lyrics are at once incisive, stirring, and profound. It was an album that summed up the directions Neil had attempted in his former work. (p. 62)

Joining Crosby, Stills, and Nash was both the best and the worst thing that ever happened to Neil Young…. The result of the merger on the Déjà Vu album is that Neil Young once again emerges as the hero of the day, saving an amiable album from cuteness, by the addition of three moving and powerful cuts, Helpless, Country Girl, and Everybody, I Love You. But sad to say, with this, Neil Young has been transformed from Neil Young, singer/guitarist/composer/lyricist to NEIL YOUNG, SUPERSTAR.

Only a superstar could have made an album like After The Goldrush. It has all the careless, shoddy, sloppy qualities of records like Ginger Baker's Air Force, Eric Clapton, and McCartney. Neil Young obviously had a lot of fun making it and that's exactly what's wrong…. After The Goldrush was fun all the way for Neil Young, but not for you and me.

Much of the album sounds like a rehashing of old Neil Young songs, bad versions of great works. The album opens with a song with the highly original title of Tell Me Why…. Both musically and lyrically trite, it leads to a much stronger cut, the title song which has sparks of brilliance in it. yet they are only sparks, and the difference between a Neil Young song like this and a really great Neil Young song is like the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. Only Love Can Break Your Heart follows and the album begins to define a pattern of moving from one cut to another by seesawing from brilliance to banality….

Southern Man … is also burdened with "heavy" lyrics. Neil Young bogus protest drivel….

Southern Man has a certain musical drive and if the lyrics lack depth, they after all, do make a point….

Don't Let It Bring You Down, with yet another stock title, is in its own way the best cut on the album. Excellent lyrics [and] some intriguing musical figures … give it the power we expect from Neil Young. Understatement and subtlety put across a meaningful and difficult theme in a unique and stunning way. It is Neil Young at his very best, searching, innocent, and terribly, terribly wise….

Crippled Creek Ferry masquerades as brilliant but is really just clever: fleetingly amusing, nothing more….

Neil Young has no doubt pleased himself with this record and not worked at creating something with depth and originality. (p. 64)