Neil Young
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Chrome Dreams II
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Label: Warner/Reprise
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Sound/Style: Raw-boned and expressive rock, country-rock and ballads
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After forty years of fiercely independent music making, Neil Young shows no signs of curbing his itchy muse. If fans thought they’d seen the end of Young’s edgy opinions and electric guitar fury after his near-fatal brain aneurysm in 2005, the protest album Living With War proved he hadn’t hung up his hippie ideals or his rock-and-roll shoes. Ever unpredictable, Young has now assembled a sweeping collection that contains blistering rock, gentle ballads and countrified mid-tempo fare, drawing partly from unreleased material going back more than twenty years. The title of the new Chrome Dreams II, in fact, references the shelved 1976 project Chrome Dreams, an album that became a kind of Holy Grail to the die-hards who trace Young’s every step. The more casual Neil Young fan won’t need to follow the musical breadcrumb trail nearly so avidly to recognize that Young is revisiting familiar territory from numerous stages of his four-decade career, such as the rustic country-rock of 1972’s acclaimed Harvest.
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In the tradition of lengthy tracks like 1969’s venerable “Cowgirl in the Sand,” Young offers two double-digit opuses. Surprisingly well-paced over its eighteen-plus minutes, “Ordinary People” pits a horn section against Young’s wrenching lead guitar and takes a sprawling look at human nature’s best and worst tendencies, avoiding a black-and-white perspective by allowing all these elements to mingle. Ultimately, Young’s vote is for the “patch of ground people” that he predicts will rise up from the socio-economic fringes to reclaim an America corroded by greed and crime. . (“Ordinary people/ Trying to make their way to work/ Downtown people/ Some are saints and some are jerks/ Everyday people/ Stopping for a drink on their way to work/ Alcoholic people/ Takin’ it one day at a time.”)
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Mostly, though, Young’s focus is on things of a divine nature. As though seeing with fresh eyes, he dwells on the journey to a deeper understanding of God, though he never mentions the word. It’s as if he’s opposed to any concrete descriptor that would rob souls of the chance to discover the mystery on their own terms. This theme informs “Spirit Road,” in which a sage-like Young advises that each person must discover the pathway to spiritual awareness. This is not mere feel-good spirituality, as the dark and jagged number outlines the evils that must be overcome along the way, such as the snake that “makes you lie and makes you cheat, (and will) steal your shoes and cut your feet.”
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The more beatific aspects of faith are represented on the jubilant “The Believer” and the openly sentimental “Shining Light,” in which Young anticipates the wonders of total communion with his Creator. (“Shining light/ What will you show me now/ What can I bring to you/ To stand in your glow/ Shining light/ When will you show your love/ When can I see you/ And stand in your glow/ Shed your light ? show your love.”)
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Though Young relies largely on his standard musical vocabulary, he infuses it with considerable passion and integrity as he beckons to his listeners from further down the spirit road than he’s ever been. Like the oxidized vintage car hood that adorns the cover of Chrome Dreams II, Young reminds us that it isn’t polish, but character that survives over the long haul.
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Chrome Dreams II
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| Neil Young |
