["After the Gold Rush"] stands up to listening better than it does to criticism….

Certainly, "After The Gold Rush" has its faults … the album is too much a collection of separate and distinct songs to make it acceptable to those who demand some kind of linking thread to run through a record.

Stylistically it lies somewhere between the first and second albums: the arranged tightness of the first is mingled with part of the jamming spirit of the second, and in some cases the result is an ideal blend…. There are … two remarkable beautiful pop songs, a stately minuet called "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" and "When You Dance I Can Really Love," which is a really happy song—unusual for Neil. Then again, "Don't Let It Bring You Down" may be the best cut of all, a song with the most typical Young minor cadences and trembling vocal line. The album ends with "Cripple Creek Ferry," a perfect fragment like some nostalgic memento. Myself, I play this album all the time.