The former, the only track on the original album to feature Crazy Horse instead of the M.G.s, sounds, predictably, like the same band playing the same song. “Goin’ Home” and “How Ya Doin’” are similarly of a piece with their final forms. As on Are You Passionate?, Young's scorched guitar tone and pleasantly meandering leads provide a welcome contrast, elevating “Quit” beyond pastiche and toward something more idiosyncratic. The rhythm section is appropriately laid-back even the call-and-response backing vocal arrangement, the final version’s most overt homage to Stax-era soul, is already in place. It’s a good song, with a lilting melody and a tear-jerking premise: Young spends the verses trying in vain to convince a partner not to leave, despite the pain he’s caused her, before a chorus that consists only of her stone-faced response: “Don’t say you love me.” The band is more than capable of conjuring the right atmosphere, which is something like a corner bar after the revelers have filed out and only the regulars remain.
The Crazy Horse rendition of “Quit” that opens Toast, for instance, is hardly distinguishable from the one the M.G.s laid down the following year, other than by its slightly darker recording fidelity. Instead, the alternate versions demonstrate that Young had the understated R&B of Are You Passionate? in mind before he ever hired the M.G.s to play it, and that Crazy Horse was better than anyone could have reasonably expected at delivering the sorts of grooves he was after. Disappointment” (retitled “How Ya Doin’” here) with Crazy Horse’s familiar unrefined squall. You might think, given that premise, that Toast would replace the in-the-pocket smokiness of Are You Passionate? highlights like “Quit” and “Mr. The hook: Before bringing the M.G.’s into the studio, Young recorded these songs with Crazy Horse, the band of brilliant rock primitivists who have backed him on many of his best-loved albums over the years. Which makes Toast, a previously unreleased seven-song collection recorded in 2001, over half of which eventually made its way to Are You Passionate? in marginally revised form, a decidedly fans-only affair. Not a bad record, but hardly anyone’s favorite Neil Young album, either.
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