Zuma will go down as one of the very rare Crazy Horse albums where the band manages to play underneath Neil's songs, rather than the songs being short breaks between the relentless guitar workouts. When Neil decides to light one up and hit the pedals ('Cortez the Killer') it's a LOT more laidback than the trilogy of greats on "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere", which is a stunning feat in itself: music to nod off too. There's "Barstool Blues" (possibly the real blueprint for classic southern rock) with it's great opening lines of 'If I can hold on to just one thought long enough to know why my mind is moving so fast and the conversation is slow"; there's "Drive Back" (a basic rock workout) with the perfect kiss-off of 'Drive back to your old town, I wanna wake up with no-one around' and the undisputed champion rock of "Don't Cry No Tears".
This is as close as Neil has come to putting together a coherent rock n roll album (that sounds good!), mixing in a CSNY out-take here and a ballad or 2 there in amongst the Crazy Horse moments - it's not hard to work out where his head was really at, singing 'I don't believe this song' over and over during "Pardon My Heart" (one of the aforementioned ballads), but at least he was coherent enough to realise what he was actually doing, which possibly couldn't have been said for the previous few albums (Tonights The Night, On The Beach, Time Fades Away, Journey Through the Past...especially Journey Through the Past!)

Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Don't Cry No Tears
2. Danger Bird
3. Pardon My Heart
4. Lookin' For A Love
5. Barstool Blues
6. Stupid Girl
7. Drive Back
8. Cortez The Killer
9. Through My Sails