Re·ac·tor


Re·ac·tor is the eleventh studio album by Canadian / American musician Neil Young, and his fourth with Crazy Horse, released in 1981.

Content

Musical style

The album marked Young's first use of the Synclavier, which would be featured heavily on the subsequent albums Trans and Landing on Water.
The song "Shots" had originally been performed live in 1978 as a ballad.
In 2003, Greg Cot of Chicago Tribune proclaimed that Re·ac·tor "works up a punk-blues racket that sounds as shaggy and disheveled as anything the Replacements recorded". AllMusic opined the album to contain "guitar-drenched hard rock made up of thrown-together material".

Packaging

The album features the Serenity Prayer on its back cover.

Release

It was unavailable on compact disc until it was released as a HDCD-encoded remastered version on August 19, 2003, as part of the Neil Young Archives Digital Masterpiece Series.

Reception

William Ruhlmann of AllMusic was largely dismissive of Re·ac·tor, awarding the record only two-out-of-five stars, although praised "Shots" as " a more substantive and threatening song given a riveting performance".

Track listing

All tracks are written by Neil Young.
;Side one
  1. "Opera Star" – 3:31
  2. "Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze" – 4:15
  3. T-Bone" – 9:10
  4. "Get Back on It" – 2:14
;Side two
  1. "Southern Pacific" – 4:07
  2. "Motor City" – 3:11
  3. "Rapid Transit" – 4:35
  4. "Shots" – 7:42

    Personnel