“When today has come and gone/ I might be singing my new song…” growls Neil Young on the opening line of his 48th studio album, Talkin’to the Trees. Although he’s backed by a ragtag band of long-term collaborators (branded here as The Chrome Hearts), the bumble-bump of the wheezy harmonica, acoustic strum and rattling drum of “Family Life” make him sound like a one-man band rummaging absentmindedly through a cramped store cupboard in search of the next line… Which turns out to pivot on the almost comically underwhelming, yet triumphantly delivered, rhyme: “Might be short and it might be long/ But I’ll be singing my new song!” Taahh-dahh!
You wait patiently as the rambling rocker lifts line after line from the shelves, listing his family members, telling you where they’re at now and worrying away at emotional sores. He names his sons and pines for “my grandchildren who I can’t see”. The question of why Young might be estranged from the children of his daughter, Amber, appears to be answered when he goes on to describe actor Daryl Hannah (who he married in 2018) as his “best wife”. Surely an unnecessary slap in the face for Amber’s mother, Pegi, to whom Young was married for nearly 40 years? Unnecessary, even if true. Also, is it sweetly homely or plain patronising that the highly accomplished Hannah (who recently released a documentary about Young on tour) is lauded only for being “the best cook in the world”?
It’s all par for the course on this collection of 10 new songs that find the Godfather of Grunge beetling along heroically/tediously in the same old tyre tracks he’s been stuck in for years. As a longtime Young fan, I found myself feeling as torn as his well-worn stage denim. On the one hand: I found myself bored listening to tracks such as “First Fire of Winter”, which leans heavily into the recycled three-chord riff of his 1970 classic song “Helpless”, and again as “Silver Eagle” chunters along to the singalong tune of Woody Guthrie’s 1940 anthem “This Land Is Your Land”. On the other, I found it undeniably heartwarming to hear Ole Shakey bumbling through the same old chord sequences he’s used since the Seventies, singing about being stuck in the queue at his local farmer’s market (as he does on the title track).
Elsewhere, though, we find that the man who wrote the blistering “Ohio” in 1970 (hitting back against President Nixon in response to the Kent State shootings) has lost none of his electric rage against injustice. Even if the lumbering, two-chord anti-Donald Trump, anti-Elon Musk protest tracks (“Big Change” and “Lets Roll Again”) do sound as though they’ve been busked up in minutes.
“Lets Roll Again” sees him calling on the American car industry to “Build us something that won’t kill our kids/ That runs real clean”. But there’s little of Ohio’s efficient lyrical craft in the lines, “Come on America/ Let’s get in the race … Over in China, they’re way ahead/ That’s hard to swallow.” There’s also some incoherence as Young rails against Musk with: “If you’re a fascist get a Tesla/ If you’re a democrat taste your freedom/ Get whatever you want and taste your freedom” Does that mean democrats are exempt from the Tesla boycott? Who knows!
There’s still something to love in the way Young has stayed in his lane. Talkin to the Trees drifts into more interesting territory towards the end, with its spaceously jazzy drumming, yawning whale song, pedal steel and lullsome keyboards of “Bottle of Love” (over which Young’s crackle-glazed high tenor croons of “flying across the fields”). The closer, “Thankful”, is an acoustic swayer on which he leaves us with a hippified glow of gratitude for the “peaceful earth” and an ongoing plea for the planet. Many artists, including the late Marianne Faithfull, created some of their best work in their later years. This is not Young’s best work. It is, however, a record that should raise smiles on the faces of the faithful.
