Out of time but timeless, Neil Young completed a trinity of willfully uncommercial albums with On The Beach, themed around desolation and predation. The album cover says it all, the death of materialism signified by an automobile buried in the sand while the artist stares out into infinity. On The Beach was the last of Young’s bleak statements; he would return in sounder mind, but musically and lyrically this album represents a terminus for one of the most extraordinary career phases in rock and roll history.