Critical Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Robert Christgau | A |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
Dave Marsh wrote in the original Rolling Stone review:
- "The music has a feeling of offhand, first-take crudity matched recently only by Blood on the Tracks, almost as though Young wanted us to miss its ultimate majesty in order to emphasize its ragged edge of desolation. More than any of Young's earlier songs and albums—even the despondent On the Beach and the mordant, rancorous Time Fades Away—Tonight's the Night is preoccupied with death and disaster. There is no sense of retreat, no apology, no excuses offered and no quarter given. If anything, these are the old ideas with a new sense of aggressiveness. The jitteriness of the music, its sloppy, unarranged (but decidedly structured) feeling is clearly calculated."
In a followup review published in the 1983 edition of The New Rolling Stone Record Guide, Marsh wrote:
- "The record chronicles the post-hippie, post-Vietnam demise of counterculture idealism, and a generation's long, slow trickle down the drain through drugs, violence, and twisted sexuality. This is Young's only conceputally cohesive record, and it's a great one."
And as the reviewer notes in PopMatters: "Tonight’s the Night is that one rare record I will never tire of."
Read more about this topic: Tonight's The Night (Neil Young album)
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