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.
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