Is there a German word for “that feeling you get when a male country singer isn’t wearing a hat”?
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Iain Mew: Neon is a noble gas. The name is not really a suggestion of its quality, just that it’s, um, above the fray. It is odourless and colourless and has very low reactivity. If nothing else, at least the song is accurate to its chemistry.
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Anthony Easton: When Benjamin wrote, “What, in the end, makes advertisements superior to criticism? Not what the moving red neon says — but the fiery pool reflecting it in the asphalt,” do you think that he was making a tiny argument in favour of sleaze, and a tiny argument against propriety? And do you think when Chris Young sings “neon,” that he’s just a little too proper, that he doesn’t understand the power of sleaze? It’s sort of like the collard greens that I had at this vegan place last night — the first time I ever had collard greens without bacon grease — and they were kind of terrible. I am in the neon for the truth of sleaze, and the power of bacon grease. This lacks both.
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Alfred Soto: Young’s Randy Travis-esque pipes rumble with feeling on each cliché as if they were brand new — just another well-meaning sap parsing influences and sentiments.
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Brad Shoup: Young’s got a honey of a voice: the hint of a lisp, judicious in its choice of bent notes. “Neon” is static to the point of an absence seizure, or a Bill Frisell song. As a celebration of bars, it’s celebratory without compensation, filled with rhymes ranging from cute to genuinely witty. It’s going to slay at the Horseshoe Lounge; I look forward to punching it in.
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Ramzi Awn: Breezy acoustics and Pink Floyd piano riffs sail into an effortless piece of country, both high on life and down to earth. Not to mention Young’s voice. Built for a buzz at sunset, “Neon” nurses a sunburn with cold beers and bar lights, and seizes the night. Country may have its roots in nature, but Young firmly plants it in the blinking technicolor of today. I thought this night was going to be a bust, but I can practically see the city glowing, and I don’t even have a view.
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Katherine St Asaph: A week or so ago, I was walking back from the train at 4 a.m. and, on an otherwise dead Astoria block, passed a barbershop window lit up in floor-to-ceiling purple neon, glaring and purposeless and oddly, mutedly gorgeous. (Maybe it wasn’t a barbershop at all. I’d prefer to think it was.) So’s the song; its premise is pat and its rhymes garishly clever — the songwriters probably cracked a beer each after “neon / Johnny Lee on” — but damn if there isn’t a soft beauty to this, and one that, unlike “Fly Over States“, welcomes anyone, anywhere.
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Jonathan Bradley: “The moon ain’t bright enough to light up the way to playtime for people like us,” Young sings in a tone too sober to suggest too wild a night is forthcoming. It’s bar music for those nights when the only patrons in the joint are regulars: a couple beers, a quiet and uneventful evening, a glazed stare at the flickering Miller Lite sign. The kind where the bartender announces last call early. (Interesting fact: apparently only American locales accurately represent colors!)
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