Comes a Time is the ninth studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young, released by Reprise Records in October 1978. Its songs are written as moralizing discourses on love's failures and recovering from worldly troubles. They are largely performed in a quiet folk and country mode, featuring backing harmonies sung by Nicolette Larson and additional accompaniment on some songs by Crazy Horse. Production The album originally started out as a solo record, but when Young played it for Reprise executives they asked him if he would consider adding rhythm tracks to what he already had. Young agreed, and the end product was Comes a Time. Much of the album features harmony vocals from Nicolette Larson, who also shares lead vocals with Young on "Motorcycle Mama". Two songs on the album, "Look Out for My Love" and "Lotta Love", featured Young's long-time backing band, Crazy Horse. Another song, "Human Highway", was written several years prior to the album's release, and was originally recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in 1974 for a proposed album to be called "Human Highway", but in typical CSNY fashion the recording sessions were abandoned amid acrimony between the four group members and the album never came to pass. For many years it was rumoured that Young had personally purchased some 200,000 vinyl copies of Comes a Time having been unhappy with the album's sound, owing to damage that occurred to the master tape during shipment to the mixing facility. The version of the album most widely available today was personally remixed by Young from the safety copy of the original master. In a March 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, Young claimed that he, in fact, used the 200,000 LPs as shingles for a barn roof. Critical reception Reviewing for The Village Voice in October 1978, Robert Christgau hailed Comes a Time as a "tour de force" for its folkie concept and music, with melodies that rival those of Young's After the Gold Rush (1970) and a sound that is "almost always quiet, usually acoustic and drumless, and sweetened by Nicolette Larson". While noting that listeners may "wonder why this thirty-two-year-old hasn't learned more about Long-Term Relationships", Christgau was ultimately won over by "the spare, good-natured assurance of the singing and playing" for how it "deepens the more egregious homilies and transforms good sense into wisdom". Stereo Review magazine's Noel Coppage found the album to be