Ten songs, thirty-eight minutes. That’s all Neil Young needs to remind us he’s still here, still restless, still entirely himself. In the last few years alone, Young’s output has bordered on overwhelming: Homegrown (2020), Barn (2021), World Record (2022), Before and After (2023), and a steady drip of archival live recordings and unreleased material. He’s as prolific now as he was in his wildest decades, but the real question isn’t whether Neil Young has anything left to say—it’s how he chooses to say it.
This new record, his first with The Chrome Hearts—a band featuring Micah Nelson on guitar (yes, Willie’s youngest) and legendary session man Spooner Oldham on keyboards—doesn’t attempt to upend expectations. That’s notable, considering Young’s history of doing just that: recording electro-folk protest songs (Trans), cutting a rockabilly album (Everybody’s Rockin'), joining forces with Booker T., The Stray Gators, The Santa Monica Flyers, or plugging in solo for Le Noise. But here, he offers no such detours. No experiments, no disguises. Just a Neil Young album. And that’s the twist: the refusal to twist.
The album unfolds like a travelogue through Young’s familiar landscapes: creaky front porches, dusty highways, haunted forests. The opening tracks lean into his acoustic side with a sense of quiet purpose. “Family Life” is breezy folk on a country lope, Young’s harmonica darting in like an old friend. “Silver Eagle,” with its plaintive twang and lonesome lilt, could be mistaken for a long-lost Hank Williams ballad. And “Talkin’ to the Trees” is pure front-porch whimsy, the kind of tune that feels like it’s been drifting through the woodsmoke of his entire career.
Then there are the more spectral moments. “First Fire of Winter” might be the album’s heart—a delicate campfire lament where harmonica and guitar float in from another realm. “Bottle of Love,” the record’s lone curveball, brings in a gently shimmering vibraphone and piano, sounding like it drifted down from a snow globe—slow, hesitant, tender.
Of course, it wouldn’t be Neil Young without a bit of controlled chaos. The Chrome Hearts deliver the raw energy he needs without overpowering him. “Dark Mirage” is the dirtiest rocker on here: bluesy, unrelenting, almost malevolent. Shouted vocals and ghostly backups hover over a lurching beat—there’s tension throughout, but no real catharsis. “Let’s Roll Again” taps into Young’s love for asphalt, cars, and mythic American sprawl. “Movin’ Ahead” is all garage rock swagger, while “Big Change” offers something heavier and anthemic, a rallying cry for no particular revolution.
There’s something beautifully offhand about the way these tracks are played, as if Young and the band hit record mid-jam and just went with the take. And maybe they did. That’s always been part of the charm: the looseness, the immediacy, the sense that the next verse is being written as it's being sung. It’s a quality that can be mistaken for sloppiness, but more often reveals an urgency and joy that polished perfection would suffocate.
Young’s voice, once boyish and fragile, now carries the weight of decades. It wavers, it creaks—but it feels. The erosion only adds to the emotional weight, particularly on “Thankful,” a reflective closer that distills the record’s mood: humble, sincere, and quietly enduring.
Is this an essential Neil Young record? Probably not. Most of these songs feel like cousins to stronger tracks he’s released before. But there’s something deeply satisfying about hearing him return to the well, bucket after bucket, never seeming to tire. These songs are unmistakably his, no matter the arrangement. He writes Neil Young songs like breathing—one when he wakes up, one while brushing his teeth.
And maybe that’s the point. Not every album needs to be a reinvention. Sometimes, it’s enough for Neil Young to just be Neil Young.
Genre: Rock
Release date: June 13th, 2025
Produced by: Lou Adler
Label: Reprise
Rating: 8/10
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