Advertisement

arts entertainmentPop Music

Neil Young shares the stage with birds, bees, horses and wolves on odd, experimental 'Earth,' out Friday 

Neil Young has a new album coming out Friday and, befitting of the master guitarist, songwriter extraordinaire and lifelong provocateur, there are a few interesting and unusual things to know about it.

-- First, it incorporates animal sounds. The calls of dogs, horses, bees, wolves, whales and other species are incorporated both in the songs and between tracks, mixed with human applause.

-- Secondly, the record was produced with Young's newish backing band, Promise of Real, headed up by Willie Nelson's son Lukas and featuring another Nelson son, Micah.

Advertisement

-- Finally, the album's closing track -- "Love and Only Love" -- runs around 28 minutes.

News Roundups

Catch up on the day's news you need to know.

Or with:

That's a lot, and that's just the beginning. Take it in. Take a breather.

Advertisement

Although one of the most celebrated and influential rock artists of the past 50 years, the Canadian-born rocker has never been one to pander to popular opinion, and Earth is no exception. It's a "live" or, as Young told Marc Maron this week, a "living" recording of mostly previously released tracks, spanning much of his career, but focusing on new cuts of songs from 2015's The Monsanto Years, which faced lukewarm reception upon initial release. 

For Earth, the disparate tracks make for an unusual collection, but the whole sounds cohesive.

Building albums that grow and flourish like Great Novels is one of Young's specialties, no matter how impressionistic individual chapters may seem.

Part of that is bolstered by the aforementioned animal noises; Young isn't the first to experiment with unexpected -- bizarre, even -- sound effects, of course, and they've already been called "egregiously overdubbed" and a "peanut gallery" in early reviews. But, Earth's variety adds a quality of revelry that uplifts the album's lyrical aggression and loud, driving rhythms.

Advertisement

In other words, Young is intentional as he picks and chooses elements of his carefully curated artistry. That extends from nimbly played riffs to the audience itself. It's a word of warning: Humans don't like the new stuff? Well, what if it's not even for you?

Willie Nelson, his son Lukas Nelson and Neil Young perform "This Land is Your Land" during...
Willie Nelson, his son Lukas Nelson and Neil Young perform "This Land is Your Land" during the Bold Nebraska Harvest of Hope concert in 2014.(MATT RYERSON / Lincoln Journal Star/AP)

For the casual listener, the album title and mention of animal sounds have likely tipped off the record's central theme: namely, Young's concern for the environment and, in particular, the corporations he sees as causing the most damage to it. In that sense, it's a continuation of Monsanto's politicism and purpose.

The music itself is often as dynamic as Young's earliest work. His voice has aged, but that's no criticism; it simply adds a new dimension to his already singular sound. Reviewers' discontent with some of his newer efforts seems to be directed at their themes, which can feel lyrically moralistic. Heavy-handed. Reaching.

But, it's worth asking: Regardless of personal ideology, why do Young's genuinely-held beliefs seem at times more like cantankerous complaints than passionate calls to arms when they regard issues that affect literally every human life?

It's not like Young's propensity to the political is a late-in-life evolution.

Take "Southern Man," his searing, poetic meditation on the history of American racial travesties from 1970's After the Gold Rush. Or "Ohio," which he penned and recorded with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young literally days following the Kent State shooting that year. By 1989, he'd released "Rockin' in the Free World," a song as acerbic as it is anthemic.

So, it's hard to pinpoint why Monsanto and by extension Earth, because it features so many of the former's tracks, don't seem to resonate as deeply and universally. I'm inclined to agree with Pitchfork's Sam Sodomsky, who describes the lyrics as "awkwardly time-stamped with buzzwordy proper nouns" like Chevron and Safeway -- words sung on Earth, notably, by some of the best advertising jingle vocalists in L.A., Young explained to Maron. It's satire. That's clear. But, it's also distracting, at least on an initial listen.

Sure, "Rockin' in the Free World" sardonically quotes George H.W. Bush and Jesse Jackson. It systematically rips apart a very particular era's "thousand points of light" and "kinder, gentler machine gun hand." But, while unquestionably "of the time," those lines feel as urgent and necessary almost three decades later, on the other side of a second Bush administration.

Published January 17, 1989 - Neil Young wanted more from a placid Dallas crowd at the Bronco...
Published January 17, 1989 - Neil Young wanted more from a placid Dallas crowd at the Bronco Bowl. (J. MARK KEGANS - staff photographer / 29510)

That said, it's hard not to respect Young's willingness to blatantly call out those on his political hit list, one-by-one. His lyrical aggression ramps up on the album's previously unreleased second track, "Seed Justice," which begins with the adamant repetition of the line "I won't quit," and hits an initial crescendo on "Hippie Dream" from 1986's Landing on Water, about midway through Earth.

Advertisement

That 20-year-old track reveals a necessary truth for anyone, myself included, who has the audacity to ask why Young isn't the exact same person he was a half century ago:

"Just because it's over for you / don't mean it's over for me."

Fair. Absolutely fair. He reserves the right as a writer and a person to create new things, at the risk that others won't like them. He's raging against the dying of the light. Name a contemporary recording artist that even attempts to join him. Perhaps you can, but can you name three?

See, just because our nostalgia is full of "wooden ships" -- an inescapable reference in "Hippie Dreams" to the song of the same name by his former sometimes-band mates Crosby, Stills and Nash -- doesn't mean we're allowed to place Young immobile among them indefinitely. He's allowed to explore and experiment. If we're not on board with that, then maybe we share blame for the mediocre songwriting, mired with stagnant cliches and insincere lip-service, so prevalent in contemporary pop music.   

Advertisement

"Hippie Dreams" is immediately followed by a gentle, mellifluous version of "After the Gold Rush," which seems as current as ever. Young dropped in the original French horn, but wisely adds his backup chorale of jingle vocalists to create ebullient new harmonies.

(Giphy)

Knowing the original version intimately, I sat on baited breath wondering if Earth would provide a verbatim recording or if there would be updates. "Please, please don't change it," I chanted. But, it was thrilling waiting for surprises as the melody unfolded. My excitement dampened just momentarily when it became clear he'd revised the critical line "look at Mother Nature on the run in the nineteen-seventies" with "... twenty-first century." That wasn't because the updated version is discordant, or even unlikable, but simply because Young's particular tonal quality on the original reaches notes that, for lack of more sophisticated description, amount to an aural orgasm.

But, that's the trouble with current work from legacy artists.

Advertisement

For me, Young's 1969 record, Everybody Knows this is Nowhere -- the first he recorded with his former band, Crazy Horse -- is as close as it comes to perfection. I'm aware there are countless albums, even other Neil Young albums, others would convincingly argue surpass it among the Greatest of All Time. I mention it merely as a point of reference for personal taste:

I believe Neil Young is a genius. That's a word that should be reserved mostly for astrophysicists and certain 16th-century painters.

But, reverence is a double-sided coin: On the one hand, it's difficult to not at least like the new tracks, even when they aren't outstanding, because of pure loyalty. On the reverse, it's a challenge not to be disappointed simply because new songs inherently aren't, and can never be, the ones you already love.

It's like asking Ernest Hemingway to write The Sun Also Rises fifteen times. He damned sure tried, and he even hit the mark -- or came very close to it -- a number of times. But, what do you do with the flaccid (ironic pun intended) Across the River and Into the Trees or the weird, posthumously released Garden of Eden? Pretend you like them. Convince yourself they fit, significant parts among a sacred order. Refuse to acknowledge them.

Advertisement

It doesn't really matter. You've got On the Beach. And, Harvest. Comes a Time, Harvest Moon. Even Mirrorball to occupy your time. 

Before I even get through a second listen of Earth, I find myself waking one morning to the ghostly refrain of "Monsanto, Monsanto" echoing through my consciousness. The corporate choir's buzzwordy melodies seem to have grown on me, which I recognize likely says more about my own "soft-touch" loyalty than their lyrical quality. Upon a third listen, I'm digging Earth

I'm energized by "Seed Justice" -- a good driving song ... or, well, one for peddling furiously on an eco-friendly bike commute. The crack of Young's voice, a lovely imperfection as he reaches for an early high note in "Vampire Blues," hits me squarely in the chest, underscored by the depths of his hisses when "sucking blood from the earthhhhh" becomes more furious in later verses.

Despite my growing appreciation, it's unclear if I'll listen again to this album; much less if it will become part of my normal rotation. But, again, that's inconsequential. I'm instead wondering if I'm an environmentalist -- in name only, at best -- and why it's not a sexier cause for guitar licks, an inherently sexy medium. I'm thinking about bees and fish and what the hell I even ate this morning beneath its brightly optimistic "organic" sticker. For the moment, I'm thankful for that push toward new considerations.

Advertisement

'Earth' was released June 17 exclusively to Tidal; it will be out on double CD and Pono on June 24 with a triple LP release on Aug 12.