Dead Confederate & Friends
Brooklyn Bowl
New York, NY
September 24

Neil Young’s 1975 landmark Tonight’s the Night is a lot of things, and most of all, loaded. To these ears, it remains Young’s darkest and deepest work not only because of the more obvious, wrenching intensity beneath the songs but because of the more quietly disarming and blackly humorous moments, too. What an album, laying bear all of Young’s despair, loss, regret and resignation over the deaths of dear friends, but not a solemn occasion – rather, a hazy, angry, bitingly sad one.

A band that isn’t Neil’s couldn’t possibly offer all of that subtext. And interpreting a beloved album front-to-back that isn’t yours is a gimmick no matter how you slice it, and definitely a gamble: the triumph is still Neil’s, not the interpreter’s. The band doing the covering further stacks the deck against itself with a pre-announced setlist and a heap of expectations from audience members that have heard, and formed associations to, rock, folk and blues music that’s decades old.

So, yeah, it’s a ballsy move. But Dead Confederate carried it off at Brooklyn Bowl with such aplomb that its performance of “Night” ranks with the best classic album, track-by-track cover jobs heard in recent years. The band gets the album – and could therefore get inside the album – even though they’re several steps and a generation removed from its emotional wounds set to music. It was no mere recital.

Dead Confederate offers intense psychedelic rock that’s often gripping and sometimes sludgy, so the hazier tunes came easiest: the desolate barroom blues of “Speakin’ Out,” for example, or the lonely drift of “Albuquerque.” Others aren’t as well-fitting — they nailed the boogie of “Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown” but not quite the snarl – and still others, like the gnarly, bitten-off country rock in “Lookout Joe,” are disarming, more Southern soul than Neil’s version. As a set, it was ferociously confident.

The encore left Neil behind and became a pile-on with members of the opening bands, Hollis Brown and Turf War, joining Dead Confederate for Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart.” It was appropriate: whirring guitars and a night-fitting tone of helplessness.