The Latest From the Horse’s Mouth Brings More Classic Neil Young

It’s hard to keep up with Neil Young. The Canadian-American singer-songwriter truly is on a mission to publish his music, both old and new, and he’s not slowing down. Since December 2021, Young who recently turned 77, has put out three live and three studio albums. The latter includes his new studio project with Crazy Horse, World Record, released on November 18.

I think there are two ways to look at World Record. One is to conclude the album presents nothing new we haven’t heard from Neil Young before, which is a fair statement. The other way to look at it is he is giving us more of classic Neil, the kind of music his fans love. If you’ve been a frequent visitor of my blog or know my music taste otherwise, you will not be much surprised I wholeheartedly embrace the second view.

World Record is the 42nd studio album by Young and his 15th with Crazy Horse, according to Wikipedia. They had to count them all! It comes less than a year after its predecessor Barn, which appeared in December 2021 and which I reviewed here. Like Barn, World Record features Young’s longtime backing band Crazy Horse, including Nils Lofgren (guitar, upright piano, dobro, slide guitar, lap steel, pedal steel, accordion, sweep percussion, vocals), Billy Talbot (bass, vocals) and Ralph Molina (drums, vocals). In addition to vocals and guitar, Young provides upright piano, vibes, harp, harmonica, Marxophone, pump organ, Wurlitzer and kick tub.

From left: Rick Rubin, Neil Young and New Zealand radio DJ, record producer and TV presenter Zane Lowe during an interview conducted for Apple Music at Rubin’s Shangri-La studio in Malibu, Calif.

Unlike its predecessor, the new album was co-produced by Rick Rubin. While he has worked with countless other artists over the past 40 years, including the likes of Johnny Cash, AC/DC, Sheryl Crow, Santana and ZZ Top, if I see this correctly, World Record marks his debut with Neil Young. Well, there’s always a first time! The album has a spontaneous and laid-back feel to it. According to Apple Music, Most of the songs started as melodies Young whistled to himself while walking in the woods, and were written from start to finish in just two days. I’d say it’s time to check out some music!

Let’s kick things off with the opener Love Earth. Unless noted otherwise, all tracks were written by Young. “The reason I wrote Love Earth is because I see it as a simple message,” he explained in a post on his website Neil Young Archives. “If you do good things to Earth and try to keep the planet clean and taken care of, she will take care of you and your grandchildren in return.” Young has been singing about environmental concerns since 1970 and the days of After the Gold Rush.

When I first heard the beginning of I Walk With You (Earth Ringtone), the heavily distorted guitar sounded immediately reminded me of Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black). Young doesn’t fool around when it comes to distortion! The lyrics leave no doubt about the message:…I look out at the change and I wonder how the earth could be going to somewhere I’ve never seen/Walk with me now to the ends of the earth and you’ll see what the damage can be/Fight with me now to the end of the wars and believe what they’ve done for you, if you now are free…

The World (Is In Trouble Now) dials back the distortion in favor of Young’s pump organ and harmonica. In this tune, Young goes beyond describing troubling signs of change to calling for activism:…On this street we walk together now/To send this message here/Let me wait beyond the things I know/And try to be a light…

Walkin’ On the Road (To the Future) is another acoustically focused song. As he oftentimes does, in this tune, Young offers some hope amid the doom and gloom of the planet’s decline:..Walkin’ on the road to the future is scary/We want to make the best of the past and not tarry/These are the things we’ve done and they have a cost/But we will take it on and try to make the best of us…

A standout tune on the album is the 15-minute-plus Chevrolet, seemingly a bit of a contradiction lyrically speaking on an album that is focused on environmental decay. Since I already covered the song in my latest Best of What’s New installment, I’m skipping it here. Instead, the final track I’d like to call out is The Wonder Won’t Wait.

World Record, which appears on Reprise Records, was recorded live and mixed to analog tape at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La studio in Malibu, Calif. BTW, in case you’re wondering about the cover, it’s a shot of Neil Young’s father, Scott Alexander Young, who was a Canadian journalist, sportswriter and novelist.

The final word shall belong to Neil: “We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he told Apple Music. “It’s probably the only time in the world that you could ever see where all the people of all the countries all around the world could have the same idea: ‘Wait a minute, we got to do something because this is no good.’ We’re all feeling it.”

Sources: Wikipedia; Apple Music; YouYube

Best of What’s New

Hope your Saturday is groovy and welcome to another installment of my weekly feature, in which I’m taking a look at newly-released music. Except for one track, all tunes featured in this post appear on releases that came out yesterday (November 18).

Weyes Blood/It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody

Kicking off this Best of What’s New is Weyes Blood (born Natalie Laura Mering), a versatile singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has been active since 2003. Starting out with noise and experimental rock, her music has evolved into more traditional folk and soft rock. At the age of 15, Mering started writing songs under the moniker Wise Blood, a reference to a novel by Flannery O’Connor. After studying music in college for one year in Portland, Ore., Mering dropped out and subsequently played bass in experimental rock group Jackie-O Motherfucker and keyboards in noise rock band Satanized. In 2011, she released her debut album The Outside Room as Weyes Blood And The Dark Juices. Since her 2014 sophomore release The Innocents, Mering’s albums have appeared under the Weyes Blood moniker. This brings me to her fifth and latest album And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow and the opener It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody. Like all other tunes, it was written by Mering. The great sound and Mering’s captivating vocals drew me in right away. This is gorgeous music!

The Winston Brothers/Think

The Winston Brothers are an all-instrumental funk outfit from Germany. From the website of their record label Colemine Records: The Winston Brothers are a modular studio project by Hamburg-based multi-instrumentalist and producer Sebastian Nagel (The Mighty Mocambos, Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band) and drummer / percussionist extraordinaire Lucas Kochbeck (The KBCS, Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band, Hamburg Spinners). Industry veterans with a penchant for analog music production, the two combine a boom bap state of mind with well-rounded funk acumen and able frequent collaborators to create dynamic arrangements that are both an audible nod to the genre’s past as well as a contemporary blend of like-minded organic styles. Here’s Think, a groovy track from their debut album Drift.

The Wombats/Dressed to Kill

I first came across The Wombats from Liverpool, England in August 2019 when they opened for The Rolling Stones at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Here’s more from their AllMusic bio: British indie rock trio the Wombats make driving post-punk and new wave-influenced pop marked by their cheeky, satirically sharp-tongued point of view. The band initially broke through with their 2007 debut album, A Guide to Love, Loss & Desperation, which hit the Top 20 in the U.K. They have continued to mature, balancing chart success with artful productions like 2011’s This Modern Glitch, 2015’s Glitterbug, and 2018’s Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life, each of which reached the Top Five on the U.K. albums chart. In 2022, the group released their fifth studio album, Fix Yourself, Not the World. Now The Wombats are back with a new EP titled Is This What It Feels to Feel Like This? Here’s Dressed to Kill.

ShwizZ/Static Blue

Nyack, N.Y.-based ShwizZ released their latest single Static Blue on November 11. The group, which I featured before here and here, draws substantial influence from classic progressive rock and funk. Their Spotify profile puts it like this: If Zappa, Yes, P-Funk and King Crimson had a love child, it would be named…ShwizZ. The band, which has been around for about 10 years, features  Ryan Liatsis (guitar, vocals), Will Burgaletta (keyboards, vocals), Scott Hogan (bass, vocals) and Andrew Boxer (drums, vocals). Static Blue, credited to the entire group, rocks nicely and has a great sound. Check it out!

Neil Young & Crazy Horse/Chevrolet

I’m particularly thrilled to close out this new music revue with Neil Young, one of my longtime favorite artists, who last Sunday turned 77 and isn’t slowing down. Coming less than a year after Barn (December 10, 2021), which I reviewed here, World Record is the latest studio album by the Canadian-American singer-songwriter with his longtime backing band Crazy Horse. In between, Young put out five other albums: Archives release Toast (July 8, 2022), originally recorded with Crazy Horse in 2001 and subsequently shelved (see my review here); and four live albums, including Noise & Flowers with Promise of the Real (August 5, 2022), as well as Citizen Kane Jr. Blues (May 2022), Royce Hall 1971 (May 2022) and Dorothy Chandler Pavilion 1971, which all appeared on May 6, 2022. It’s almost impossible to keep up with Neil who appears to be on a mission to publish music, new and old, perhaps realizing he doesn’t have an infinite amount of time left. World Record, which has a loose and spontaneous feel, was co-produced by Rick Rubin and Young. Here’s the official video for Chevrolet, where you can hear Neil talk about the tune in the beginning – kind of fun to watch. If you want to skip ahead, the crunchy rocker starts at around the 2-minute mark.

Last but not least, this post wouldn’t be complete without a Spotify playlist of the above and a few additional tunes – sans Neil Young who asked Spotify to remove his music in April, protesting the company’s hosting of controversial podcaster Joe Rogan.

Sources: Wikipedia; Colemine Records website; AllMusic; YouTube; Spotify

Clips & Pix: Neil Young & Crazy Horse/Heading West

On October 28, Neil Young announced Heading West on his Neil Young Archives website, the second upfront tune from his upcoming new album with Crazy Horse, Barn. The below official video appeared on November 4.

The crunchy electric rocker follows the acoustic folk tune Song of the Seasons from October 15, which I previously featured here. Both of these tracks sound like classic Neil, and I’m looking forward to the album that’s scheduled to drop on December 10.

My mom and I travelled across the country together, heading west, Young wrote on his website. She was on her way back home to start over. I was on my way there with her. Here’s a song about me and my mom and those ‘growing up’ times. It’s so great to remember her this way!

Heading West features Young (guitar, lead vocals) and his Crazy Horse band mates Nils Lofgren (piano, backing vocals), Billy Talbot (bass, backing vocals) and Ralph Molina (drums). The tune was recorded in the Rocky Mountains on June 21 this year at Le Mobile Remote Recording Studio. Housed in a remote recording truck, Le Mobile is a rolling recording studio that over its nearly 50-year history has been used by countless music artists from AC/DC to ZZ Top.

I think this comment by Young perfectly sums the ragged melodic tune: What a great ride with the Horse on this one! Larry Cragg [Young’s longtime guitar tech – CMM] had my guitar sounding so alive.

Neil Young with his mother Edna Blow Ragland “Rassy” Young (1918–1990) – undated photo from Neil Young Archives

In a separate statement on his website, Young also had this to say about the forthcoming album: All of BARN is real. It came from the heart. We may have cried after some takes…in happiness…in elation…A band of brothers, we have all known one another since our beginnings. We made ‘Only love can break your Heart’ and ‘Southern Man’ on the same album. We made ‘Round and Round’ and ‘Down by the River’ on the same album. We made ‘Don’t forget about Love’ and ‘Human Race’ on the same album. Welcome back. It’s not the same. Barn may be our best album ever.

That conclusion certainly doesn’t suggest a lack of confidence. One of the things I find intriguing about Neil Young is his spontaneity. He doesn’t seem to overthink his recording projects. Overall, I feel this approach has served him well, though it’s also fair to say the outcomes have varied.

Young is also known for having made impulsive decisions and having scrapped entire albums at the last minute. It doesn’t look like that’s going to be the case for Barn. If anything, for the past few years, Young seems to have been on a mission to release more of his music, as evidenced by his Archives Performance Series, not withhold it. Keeping fingers crossed!

Sources: Wikipedia; NeilYoungArchives.com; Le Mobile website; YouTube

Clips & Pix: Neil Young And Crazy Horse/Like A Hurricane

There are certain songs that just draw me in, no matter how many times I’ve listened to them. Like A Hurricane is one of them. While I’ve liked the tune for a long time, I  wouldn’t call it my favorite Neil Young song. Still, there’s just something very special about it.

To start, I think this tune is perfect for Neil’s shaky voice and his grungy style to play the electric guitar. As a guitarist, I also get a kick out of watching him play his beaten up Gibson Les Paul, a gold top that was painted black. During close-ups you can actually see that the black paint between the pickups has come off, revealing the instrument’s original color. Call me nuts, but I find it beautiful!

I guess the lyrics also speak to me. Frankly, I’m in the mood of blowing away what has been a decidedly mixed year on the personal front. I don’t mean to wine, since despite some setbacks I’m a pretty lucky guy overall, and I’m grateful for what I have. As for the not so stellar moments, screw them! Music has definitely helped me keeping it together, and that’s not going to change, not matter what life is going to throw at me!

As for next year, rock & roll will never die, and 2019 is going to be a blast!

Sources: Wikipedia, YouTube