Catherine has got this habit of listening to one album over and over. Right now she has Neil Young's On the Beach which I bought in the summer 2004 in Norway, I think it was in Bergen, in her car cd player. And it drives me crazy. I think I have only been in her car three times in the last couple of weeks. The first time I was happy to listen to that album for the twenty minutes or so it takes from Frankfurt city to where we live and it made me feel good, especially the fact that I recognised it immediately. The second and third time I thought, not again, you are killing that album. If not for you then at least for me. Have pity with me. She didn't of course. I need variation in what I listen to. Except when I discover something new.

Anyways See the Sky about to Rain came on the third time I was in her car - it also came on the first time by the way - and it smashed me. Again. We listened to it in the dark and it had that effect that it made the world stand still for the five minutes it lasted. I just listened to a live version of it and it didn't have that effect on me. It was dark again, I was in front of my computer in the cellar but that wasn't the reason. The reason that the live version didn't do it for me was that it didn't have the pedal steel guitar on it. The pedal steel is probably the instrument which is mostly responsible for the sound of American country music. A genre I don't appreciate usually. But when this instrument is used like it is used on See the Sky about to Rain where it perfectly fits with Neil Young's plaintive, subdued voice and where it reaches for something out of this world, I love it. Listen to the last two minutes of this song and you will know what I mean. Transcendence is the word for the way that instrument is played here. Of course this song has more charms. The sad lyrics, the shaking electric piano, the laid-back drums, the vigorous bass and the short mouth harp section which finishes it.

According to Shakey, the comprehensive Neil Young biography by Jimmy McDonough there is an unreleased solo demo of this song. Not too hot on that one. (Un)fortunately I have listened to a version which can't be bettered first. It has engraved itself in my brain too much. Even if the demo was more touching, it wouldn't be virgin for me any more.