Neil Young is one stubborn old man and I love him for it. When he was 24 and singing about old men on his Redwood City ranch he was prophesying his own life, so you should have seen it coming. Young has always laughed in the face of genre and he truly made some albums ready for the mp3 generation. Lately fans have been picking and choosing from his catalogue and cutting him major slack (count me as one of them). Living With War was a furious album for a guy that almost died in 2005 and Prairie Wind was subtle and warm-hearted countrified folk. Both failed to reach anything from his golden years in the ‘70s.

With Young’s approach to albums you don’t necessarily care too much and Chrome Dreams II is another case for that argument. The legendary lost album, Chrome Dreams was the original home of classics like “Powderfinger,” “Like a Hurricane,” and “Pocahontas.” All of those songs later showed up on other releases. With the sequel to that unreleased album (go figure – it’s Young being Young again) we don’t get anything on par with the original. The fuzz-rockers like the 20 verse and 18:15 minute “Ordinary People” sounds a whole lot like something Young would have put on Freedom and indeed it was originally recorded in the ‘80s. It crosscuts the “Michelob night,” where sleazy businessmen, clumsy drunks, their tired bartenders, and of course drug dealers all have a home under all that brass and saxophone playing. It’s sleek and crunchy and definitely one of the better songs the 61 year-old rocker has put out in awhile.

So, how are the new songs on the album? Well, they sound like old songs, but that sort of self-plagiarizing is expected from Young and somehow endearing most of the time. The opening track, “Beautiful Bluebird” sounds like “Out on the Weekend” almost to a tee. “Shining Light” sounds way too close to the bad parts of This Note’s For You. That male choir is really annoying. The second part of the album picks up considerably with the raucous “Spirit Road.” The strong trajectory of Living With War is still with us. “Dirty Old Man comes out of left field, in the same way that “Welfare Mothers” did. Sure it’s got ridiculous lyrics about a lewd curmudgeon who gets fired for “drinking on the job” and getting “caught with the boss’ wife in the parking lot.” It’s the kind of song that curtails any sort of artistic credibility and will upturn snob’s noses but it’s also just a fun listen. This is coming from the guy who enjoyed the earnestness of often-maligned “Old King” from Harvest Moon just so you know. Even “The Way,” with its children’s choir is sort of interesting I guess. Okay, not really.

All possible super fan bias eschewed, Chrome Dreams II is something that is spiritual, silly, and downright rocking. I’ll buy in but only with about as much attention span Mr. Young has to genre. It’s reassuring to see he’s still as stubborn as ever.
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Links
Neil Young [official site] [myspace]