At times bucolic, at others desolate, Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s 15th studio album, World Record, gets as close as any that Young has recorded, especially in recent years, to realizing a sonic approximation of his conflicted feelings about “this old planet.” The harmonies on “Walkin’ on the Road (To the Future)” are every bit as warm, beautiful, and affecting as those on the rock veteran’s ’70s classics, while the colossal and contemplative 15-minute jam “Chevrolet”—a more appropriate fit for the environmentalist theme of this album than one might think—ranks alongside his most virtuoso guitar performances.
Nearly as good is “Break the Chain,” a roiling blues-rock freak-out with a level of formalist control and a propulsive sense of momentum that makes gentle ballads like “This Old Planet (Changing Days)” and “The Long Day Before” feel all the more delicate and ephemeral, as if they could be bulldozed over by industrial power like so many swaths of once-green earth.
When recording for World Record wrapped, Young and producer Rick Rubin worried that they’d missed the mark. It wasn’t until going back and listening to the tapes that they heard something special in the eclectic sessions. To venture a guess, maybe they realized just how perfectly the album serves as a refinement of Young’s late-period output.
The smoldering sonic density of 2010’s Daniel Lanois-produced Le Noise gets a callback with the sludge-rock of “I Walk with You (Earth Ringtone),” while the power of 2012’s Psychedelic Pill is mostly reigned in until Crazy Horse finally lets loose on “Chevrolet.” Most importantly, the emotional immediacy of 2014’s A Letter Home is tapped into just as attentively by Rubin as it was by Jack White but without the pesky static noises.
The urgent environmentalism that’s so close to Young’s heart is unencumbered on World Record by either the overt politics of 2015’s The Monsanto Years or the syrupy orchestral arrangements of the previous year’s Storytone. What’s left is Young’s preternatural gift for melody (most of this album’s songs started as hummable tunes that popped into his head on his daily walks), Crazy Horse’s enduring chemistry, Rubin’s less-is-more studio hand, and, of course, the most important subject there is: this old planet.
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Great review. Look forward to listening to the album!
This review is like, goals, Man… goals. 😀
Neil is a genius and no one can come close to him except me Neil Young Jr
I’ve been picking his style since early 70’s and have his voice down.
When is the album coming out??