Neil Young Has a New Neil Young Album

"Talkin' to the Trees" Because He's Got a Family Mess

So yeah, Neil Young has a new album, "Talkin' to the Trees." (June 13, Reprise Records.) It's a very Neil Young album. So Neil Young-y you'll swear you heard it before. Which is reassuring in some ways, in others not so much.

No Crazy Horse, and yet not solo. His band this time is called the Chrome Hearts, with Micah Nelson, Willie's son, on guitar; Anthony LoGerfo on drums; Corey McCormick on bass; and, potentially most interesting, Spooner Oldham on organ. Lots of harmonica. So far, so good.

Spooner Oldham was an anchor of the house band of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, at Fame studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., and played on hundreds of the greatest soul records of all-time, including Wilson Pickett's "Mustang Sally." He co-wrote some of them too: "I'm Your Puppet," by James and Bobby Purify, and "Cry Like a Baby" for the Box Tops, which was Alex Chilton's teenage band before Alex Chilton became such a cult hero that the Replacements wrote a song about him.

I wish I could say that "Talkin' to the Trees" has any songs remotely as good as the ones I've mentioned. I can't lie--I mean, I can lie, but only under minimal duress. Oldham and Young have been performing together for many years off-and-on. Neil is 79; Oldham turned 82 the day after the album was released. His organ gives a spicy jolt to "Movin' Ahead," one of the better songs because of the rock-a-bility factor.

Not "rockabilly": That was the 1983 album credited to Neil Young and the Shocking Pinks, "Everybody's Rockin," on the Geffen label. That album was 25 minutes long. The Neil Young and Crazy Horse 2012 album "Psychedelic Pill" had longer songs: Opening track "Driftin' Back" was more than 27 minutes, and every minute mattered if you love Crazy Horse really stretching out as much as I do. My wife and I were in a typical traffic jam heading north out of New York on the Hutchinson Parkway, because of rumors of a zombie invasion. After the traffic loosened up, "Driftin' Back" was still on the car stereo. One thing about Neil is that he sure knew how to make time fade away.

About "Everybody's Rockin'": No one was was buying, but everybody was suing: David Geffen sued Young for making intentionally non-commercial records, Young sued back for breach of contract . . . the mean old days of the big-time record business, nothing to see here, folks, except lawyers getting richer. This was the Neil Young of the 1980s, feeling his experimental oats: "This Note's for You," in 1988, was credited to Neil Young and the Bluenotes, and featured a lot of horn players. Young's bewitchingly reedy voice didn't stand up well to trumpets and saxophones, and the song's weren't that great.

In fact, regarding the title song of "This Note's for You," Young told British journalist Nick Kent: "'Jesus Christ, this must be the most idiotic fucking song I've ever written." Or Young told Kent that he told his bus driver that. You get the picture. I was always confusing Roy Kent, the aging soccer star played by Brett Goldstein on "Ted Lasso," with Nick Kent, one of the eminences of UK music critics. But that's my problem.

Neil Young's problem is the very weird and personal songs on "Talkin' to the Trees." It's one thing to start an album with "Family Life," a song about not being allowed to see his grandchildren. But the next song, "Dark Mirage," which has some musical muscle, is also a complaint about not seeing his grandchildren. Neil almost spells out why his daughter, Amber Jean, now 41, won't let Neil, see Ronan and Allyah, her kids with her husband Rajib Chowdury, who is an investment banker. Neil Young's son in law is an investment banker! This can happen to kids who grew up children of hippies, as the late renegade art critic Dave Hickey wrote in the title essay to his collection, "Pirates and Farmers: Essays on Taste."

I think one song about not seeing his grandchildren is enough on a 10-song, 38-minute album that sometimes sounds like it was recorded in 35 minutes, though the audio quality is good. A second such song should be subject to tariff. Not that anyone pays for music now, anyway. Young is co-producer with Lou Adler, top of the line L.A. record executive in his time, who is 91 and married to Page Hannah, 62, a sister of Young's wife Daryl Hannah.

I feel for Neil: Having been awarded the status of "grandparent" by two of my daughters in the last two years, there's nothing that comes close to the joy of that life change, except possibly the scones and flat whites served at the cafe next to the Mespil Hotel in Dublin. Did you ever order a flat white from a Starbucks? They come in a standard Starbucks container, even if dining in. So what is the point? I should write a song about that: "Can't get my/can't get my/flat whites/made right/what's wrong/with the U.S.A." (The photo in the app link below was from Dublin, where I was enjoying the company of the dead poet Patrick Kavanagh.)

To find out why Neil can't see his grandkids--it's not like he ever associated with dope fiends or anything--I went to the expert on this topic: People magazine.

Both of Neil's sons: Zeke, with first wife Carrie Snodgrass, and Ben, with Pegi Young, have cerebral palsy. Young has spent a good part of his fortune supporting education and rehabilitation for CP research and treatment. (See the Bridge School benefits.) Snodgrass died in 2004; Pegi Young, who was also the mother of daughter Amber Jean, died of ovarian cancer in 2019. Amber Jean was very close to Pegi. Amber Jean had epilepsy, as did her dad, and became an artist. Neil Young is married to the actress Daryl Hannah since 2018.

In "Family Life," Young gives shouts out to his kids, and grandkids, and to Hannah: "Singing for my best wife ever/The best cook in the world." If you were as close as Amber Jean was to her mother Pegi, don't you think it's possible for the child to feel insulted on behalf of her mom? Neil seems clueless about that, so clueless that he blames his daughter for everything regarding the grandchildren: "I lost my little girl to the darkness inside. . .but she told me she can go/she can really go low. . . I lost my grandchildren. . . in the dark mirage." Then the chorus, deep male harmony voices almost distorted: "Dark, dark, dark, dark mirage."

They're going to have to work this out themselves. The next song, "First Fire of Winter," hews close to the melody of Young's "Helpless" (from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's "Deja Vu" album in 1970). So close that you could almost have a Saul Zaentz/John Fogerty situation, in which Zaentz, copyright owner of Creedence Clearwater Revival's songs, sued songwriter Fogerty for plagiarizing himself.

The next two songs, "Silver Eagle" and "Let's Roll Again," are both about motor vehicle transportation, and both are performed to the melody of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land." The "Silver Eagle" was or is the name of Young's tour bus; "Let's Roll Again" is a cheer for a longtime Young passion, the development of a non-polluting automobile. Young was so far ahead of the curve that he was working on transforming an old Lincoln Continental to electric power when Elon Musk was still in grade school.

Young won't even say the phrase "electric vehicle," but he does sing: "If you're a fascist, then get a Tesla. . .if you're a democrat. . . get whatever you want, and taste your freedom." He exhorts Ford, GM, and Chrysler to build "something useful that people need." Why? "China's way ahead/they're building clean/some days are like that/it doesn't matter."

The best song is probably "Big Change," with its big ass guitars. But it's no "Rockin' in the Free World." In fact, it's sort of ridiculous, as he says, "gotta do what you gotta do/head for the hills, or go to town." Are we supposed to flip a coin?

The album's title song is about how neat it is to "find food at the farmer's market, standin' in line, people everywhere." And "Bottle of Tears" offers this kernel of wisdom: The chorus is: "All your tears are being saved/In a bottle of love/go touch the animals."

That's right, go touch the animals. My grandson Ezra is going to a summer zoo camp a few hours a day. He's not even two. He cries when he gets there, but then enjoys it, I think. I don't think he's ready, but I'm not going to get into a thing about it with my daughter and son-in-law. I'm staying out the dark mirage, and I wish Neil would see that it's not a mirage: It's a mirror.

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© Wayne Robins, 2025