Chrome Dreams II

Neil Young spent his 2006 hawking Living with War, an album as immediate as a news bulletin, so perhaps it made sense that after its promo push was done he would retreat into the past, planning to finally finish Archives, the long-promised box set of unreleased performances from his vaults. Two individual discs of classic live performances were released in the winter of 2006/2007, acting as a teaser for the proposed fall release of the box, but like with most things involving Neil, things didn't work precisely as planned, as he once again pushed Archives to the back burner so he could release Chrome Dreams II, a sequel to an album that never came out in the first place. The first Chrome Dreams was slated for a 1977 release, but for some indiscernible reason Young scrapped the album, parsing out some of the songs on subsequent albums, sometimes re-recording the originals, sometimes overdubbing, sometimes just sticking the previously unreleased tracks onto new albums. Among the Chrome Dreams songs that popped later are some of his greatest, including "Like a Hurricane" and an originally acoustic "Powderfinger" and "Pocahontas," along with other such excellent tunes as "Sedan Delivery," "Too Far Gone," and "Look Out for My Love," a pedigree that would suggest that Chrome Dreams II could include its fair share of major songs. Despite the inclusion of the long-bootlegged (and simply long at a lumbering 18 minutes) "Ordinary People," that's not quite true: it's a modest collection of stray songs and new tunes, pieced together in a fashion similar to 1989's Freedom, which in fact is where the 1977 "Too Far Gone" was finally unveiled.

Indeed, Chrome Dreams II shares more similarities to Freedom than the original Chrome Dreams -- so much so that it's a mystery why it's dubbed as a sequel, but it's a mystery not worth pondering, as there are few clues to their correlation, and even if a definitive answer to their kinship could be dredged up, it wouldn't illuminate the 2007 album, which is merely a good Neil Young album. Perhaps a little more than good, actually, as this has a shagginess and tattered heart that's been missing from his work for a long time, as he's spent a good chunk of the past 15 years pursuing conceptual works, ranging from thematic concept albums (Living with War, Greendale) to musical genre exercises (Are You Passionate?, Prairie Wind). Here Neil dabbles in all his signatures, starting the album with the sweet country corn of "Beautiful Bluebird," then careening to the mildly menacing minor-key groove "Boxcar" before he gets to the light, almost bouncy soul-pop of "The Believer" (complete with call-and-response backing vocals), the Crazy Horse mysticism of "Spirit Road," the lazy loping country of "Every After," and the elongated guitar workout of "No Hidden Path." He even gets way out with "The Way," singing with a children's choir, a stab at innocence that's cheerfully at odds with the sludgy "Dirty Old Man," an unexpected revival of the boneheaded off-color jokes of "Welfare Mothers," and then, of course, there's the album's centerpiece, "Ordinary People," a winding epic recorded with the Bluenotes in 1988 that's dated in its splashy production (and perhaps its blaring horns, since Neil largely abandoned the Bluenotes after This Note's for You), yet it sounds immediate and gripping. It's the kind of song to build an album upon, which is precisely what Neil has done with Chrome Dreams II, using it as an excuse to round up other songs with no home. This doesn't make for an album that holds together thematically the way other latter-day Neil albums do, but its mess is endearing, recalling how charmingly ragged albums like After the Gold Rush, Tonight's the Night, Rust Never Sleeps, and Freedom are, even if Chrome Dreams II never manages to soar as high as those classics.

— Stephen Thomas Erlewine

The original Chrome Dreams contained some of Neil Young's most enduring electric blowouts and most somber, stirring folk-rock. That is, it would have, had it ever come out. Scrapped in 1977, Chrome Dreams has earned a place alongside Smile and Lifehouse in the Pantheon of Lost Albums, a puzzle for obsessive fans and bootleggers to try and reconstruct. Fortunately, the record was thoroughly stripped for parts, and among its 12 songs, classics "Like a Hurricane" and "Pocahontas" popped up on other Young albums.

So now, 30 years later, Young has decided his new album is a sequel to that career enigma, referencing a chapter only his most dedicated fans would know about. Why? The fuck if I know. Part of Young's charm and continued credibility is that he's grown more inscrutable as his hair has grayed, the opposite trajectory of most of his Rock Hall of Fame peers. After his brush with death in 2005, one might have expected the singer-songwriter to slow down, or at least write a bunch of grim songs about mortality—this is, after all, the guy who was singing about getting old when he was 24. But instead, Young has sped up his work rate and zagged at every opportunity, quick-fire releasing the ambitious Nashville throwback Prairie Wind and the hurried, furious Living With War.

Chrome Dreams II is less conceptually consistent than those two records; the family resemblance to its predecessor may simply be a matter of their shared scattershot approach. Indulging a grab-bag of styles and dusting off some long-shelved unreleased tracks, the record veers from Hallmark-card country to lite-soul throwbacks to Rust Never Sleeps-like garage rock. This variety might be distracting, were Young not so firmly loyal to the overarching production sound and band collaborators he's kept over the last ten years, with only his recent fondness for choral backing vocals doing much to distinguish it from his earlier work.

Strange then that the album's centerpiece, the 18-minute novella "Ordinary People", was actually recorded during Young's notorious 1980s identity disorder; it's a holdover from his 1988 r&b dalliance This Note's for You. Obviously, a song with a runtime that impressive necessitates the use of terms like "sprawling" and "epic," and it is pretty impressive, its 20 verses providing a stack of snapshots of life for drug dealers, assembly line workers, and the homeless between zealous horn and guitar solos. It aims to be the Band's "The Weight", and while it doesn't quite reach those lofty heights, it's a solid working-class anthem, despite the staleness of references to Lee Iacocca and boxing as an important cultural event.

In the shadow of "Ordinary People", the rest of Chrome Dreams II sounds a bit wispy—particularly the surprisingly adult-contempo, over-sentimental "Beautiful Bluebird" and "Shining Light". The faux Motown of "The Believer" is a little bit better, but somewhat reminiscent of 2002's Are You Passionate?, an uncomfortable lowlight of late-period Neil. Matched up against the raw, solemn acoustic classics—"Will to Love", "Star of Bethlehem"—of the original Chrome, it's telling how far Neil's ability to sculpt his quieter material into something haunting rather than hokey has faded with age.

But the electric numbers, both the compact "Spirit Road" and the extended knee-bend workout of "No Hidden Path", still ripple with vitality, even though they feature only one-third of Crazy Horse. Neither match the furious beauty of "Like a Hurricane", and "Dirty Old Man" might be a pale imitation of the raucous "Sedan Delivery," but it's still thrilling to hear Young getting his aggression out, letting the undiminished fury of his guitar tone saw off the shackles of age.

Whether the album title is Young seriously trying to reconnect to a specific moment of his past or perhaps simply making an inside joke, it's an apt demonstration that he can still shapeshift with the best of them. But while Neil Young's self-fractionation abilities are intact, the low hit to miss ratio of Chrome Dreams II is proof that not all of those personae are still quite as functional as they once were, around the time of Chapter One. Though having one good trick in the bag keeps him from becoming a mere oldies jukebox like so many other 40-year rock vets, the sampler platter of Chrome Dreams II suggests his renowned versatility, by comparison to its cult-classic ancestor, ain't what it used to be.

— Rob Mitchum, Pitchfork