“I’m Canadian, by the way, and I love the USA”, begins the first of 10 songs which survey Donald Trump’s United States with a long-settled immigrant’s sorrowful and disdainful eye. However, Neil Young’s third album with (son of Willie) Lukas Nelson’s band shrewdly eschews stereotypical angry songs for warm, pretty and even funny protest music. At best, this is really effective. He responds to Trump’s “Make America great again” slogan with the playfully pithy Already Great. Jabs at a “gameshow host, who has to boast about tearing down the things I hold most dear” don’t prevent Almost Always being a sublime melody. Elsewhere, curveballs accompany trademark country-rock chugs. Change of Heart features whistling and Children of Destiny is a politicised, bells and baubles, orchestral Broadway-style show tune (“Stand up for what you believe / Resist the powers that be!”) The scattergun approach can lack focus, but Young sounds energised by the need to confront hatred and division with humanity and hope.
