Music

Neil Young’s career has been defined by an almost wilful inconsistency. He’s legendarily resistant towards anyone imagining that they’ve got a handle on his motivations, and his appetite for experimentation has often led him astray. The reliably wild wobbles of his aesthetic radar have produced moments of both luminous brilliance and almost inexplicable awfulness. It’s hard to believe that the man behind the dark, despairingly beautiful ‘On The Beach’ could also be responsible for something as clunky and clumsy as ‘Are You Passionate?’

Given that his last few albums have been patchy to say the least, Young is overdue one of his periodic creative rebirths. This album, however, finds him looking back. ‘Chrome Dreams’ was recorded in 1977 but never released. Some of the songs here are plucked from the ‘Chrome Dreams’ sessions; others are simply complementary in spirit. Most notable, perhaps, is ‘Ordinary People’ – a semi-legendary lost text among hardcore devotees which features saxophones, trombones and the trademark duelling guitars of Young and Crazy Horse compadre Frank Sampedro, and clocks in at over 18 minutes.

Even aside from this, there’s plenty to love here, with a variety of familiar Neil Young identities present and correct. There’s the ardent balladeer of ‘The Way’, the fuzz-guitar warrior of ‘Spirit Road’ and the expansive sonic architect of ‘No Hidden Path’. However, a less welcome facet of Young’s art surfaces in the platitudinous ‘Boxcar’ which prompts the  thought that no other artist in rock would be given leeway for similes as prosaic as ‘I’m like an eagle, I like to fly high’.

Since its genesis and creation spans 30 years, it’s tough to assess where this album stands in terms of Neil Young’s formidable and sometimes baffling back catalogue. It’s often glorious for sure but even so, it occasionally sounds more like a man tying up loose ends than striking out anew.