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David Watkins

Neil Young
Chrome Dreams II
(Reprise)
Never shy of challenging his audience, Neil Young has  illuminated opposing sides of his character with each album release.
Recent years have seen the pensive (Prairie Wind) and the furious (Living with War). Chrome Dreams II is a mixed bag, taking its name from 1977's Chrome Dreams, a ghost album that Young  didn't release,  despite its cover art being designed and the music having been mastered. Instead, it became one of the more prominent bootleg albums of Young's career, featuring Like a Hurricane and Powderfinger.
Likewise, Chrome Dreams II has an eclectic, slightly illicit quality, an eerie history lesson combining 20-year-old, 18-minute-long live jams with Crazy Horse-style rock-outs and the sort of melancholic country rock that made him famous back in the day. It's a rare treat for long-time fans and newcomers.
Ordinary People is the 18-minute song in question, recorded in 1988 and charting the ups and downs - mostly downs - of drug dealers, factory workers, boxers, gun runners, vigilantes and models. Its desolation goes hand in hand with the album's allusions to the  rusting car manufacturing industry in the US, the chrome dreams of old now a bleak nightmarish present.
Yet the music is delivered with first-take gusto courtesy of Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina, long-time guitarist Ben Keith, and bassist Rick Rosas. Together they make up Young's touring band.
Elsewhere, the 14 minutes of No Hidden Path already sounds like a golden oldie from Young's extraordinary back catalogue. Again it fizzes with immediacy, a typically grizzled Crazy Horse rock-out.
Dirty Old Man is one of the skuzziest riffs Young has committed to tape, charting the misdemeanors of a man 'battling with the bottle' who likes 'to get hammered on a Friday night' but can't always wait 'so Monday's all right' too. It's typical of Young's tragicomic take on the world.
While the dirty old man gets 'caught with his boss' wife in the parking lot', Young also charts the plight of another in Ever After: 'A man had many boxes/ and he liked them quite a lot/ But they would not be opened / 'Cause the value would be shot.'
Redemption is on offer too, and Young retreads 1950s gospel with Shining Light. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine the Righteous Brothers doing something similar - yet another surprise down Young's dusty old highway.



Neil Young