Recent years have seen the unearthing of legendary vintage lost albums from the era (such as Homegrown, recorded in 1974), whilst Young’s first take, best take philosophy has gifted his best works a timeless freshness whereas the more painstakingly polished produce by Young’s contemporaries sound unmistakably chained to their time.
Whereas Young’s peers have either slowed down their rate of production match fluctuating levels of inspiration, the legendary Canadian songwriter has continued to churn out new product at an impressively relentless rate alongside an unpredictably era-hopping series of archival releases. Bob Dylan took eight years to refine the songs on his 2020 masterpiece Rough and Rowdy Ways. In the same time-span, Young released six new albums and an eccentric experimentation mixing live recordings with nature sounds. Since Young’s last fully cohesive album, 2012’s sprawling Crazy Horse workout Psychedelic Pill, however, the results have suggested roughly one quarter inspiration to three quarters of perspiration. Dispiritingly half-baked records like 2022’s World Record and 2021’s Barn (both with Crazy Horse) suggested that Young had stockpiled one or two strong new tunes and decided to record a bunch of hastily scribbled sketches to arrive at an LP-length offering, because slowing down just isn’t a very Neil Young kind of thing to do.
Recorded with a new (or new-ish: the rhythm section derive from the Promise of The Real, Young’s regular choice of band in the mid to late 2010s, whilst veteran keyboardist and Southern soul songwriting and session musician legend Spooner Oldham played on 1992’s sublime Harvest Moon) band The Chrome Hearts, Talkin’ To The Trees breaks the pattern, to some extent. Although the Chrome Hearts were initially put together to help Young fulfil some high-profile obligations after 2024’s initially triumphant North American tour with Crazy Horse had to be stopped on health grounds, the new band has clearly re-energised Young. At 79, Young’s voice – often creeping up the very top of his register – sounds remarkably warm and supple here, and the more musically assertive cuts like “Big Change” (a rarely effective slice of political commentary from Young, whose politically or environmentally motivated tunes tend to sound more like hastily churned-out op-eds than fully realised songs) and the unexpectedly funky garage-blues wail of “Dark Mirage” practically crackle with engaging energy, with Young’s long-suffering guitar emitting guttural growls and shrieks that suggests some primordial bird-beast screeching as it glides over a ruined landscape.
“Let’s Roll Again” continues in the electric rocker mode,
but with much poorer results: a disjointed call for US car manufacturers
to go all in on electric car development riding a melody lifted from
Woody Guthrie’s infinitely more eloquent “This Land Is Your Land” (also
borrowed for the much more appealing “Silver Eagle”, a slight but sweet
ode to Young’s tour bus), the tune joins the either endearingly or
embarrassingly corny opener “Family Life” in showcasing the practical
problems resulting from Young’s reluctance to refine or rework ideas.
Thankfully, the rest of Talkin’ To The Trees
proves much more rewarding. Predominantly acoustic and frequently
echoing tunes from different corners of Young’s illustrious back
catalogue, the mood is reflective and unhurried, with Young drawing
inspiration from his immediate surroundings: shopping at the farmers
market on the appealingly lilting title track, taking a now extensive
journey through the past on the sparsely beautiful “Thankful”, with its
nods towards the hook of “Harvest Moon”. The slow-burning, weightlessly
drifting “Bottle of Love” sounds genuinely fresh (albeit being maybe one
redraft away from realising its full potential), whilst the sparkling,
low-lit prettiness of “First Fire of Winter” (strong echoes of the
melody of “Helpless”) could be the most moving ballad Young has managed
in years, if not decades.
Talkin’ To The Trees is no major return to form:
there is too much letting go of unfinished things on view here for that.
However, in its commitment to keeping things simple and looking inwards
for inspiration, it resembles 2000’s underrated Silver & Gold, which alongside Toast
(recorded in 2001 but not released until 2022) featured the last
evidence of Young’s 1990s creative comeback: not a bad result for a 2025
model Neil Young album.
