For the first time since 1996, Neil Young has saddled up the full Crazy Horse posse, for what is a covers album of oft heard American folk songs. Opener ‘Oh Susannah’ has acts of contrition being readied, and doubting Thomas’ uncomfortably staring at their shoes. Contorted, languid distorted louche rock ‘n’ roll, coupled with a hypnotic chanting mantra turn the song inside out, giving it a Southern gothic tone akin to a grinning skeleton gunning a hearse to Alabama with a banjo on its knee.
The Indian-styled tribal beats of ‘Clementine’ reframe the Western landscape as a place of pain and tortured longing. There’s a general looseness, fragility and primal rawness to the playing throughout. The prod and plod of ‘High Flyin’ Bird’ combines folky, psychedelic and grunge punk in a valium-induced slouch through a scrapyard. The winding rhythm leaves so much empty space for the music to coil around, like a never-ending burning cigarette worked by a snake charmer.
Other songs are less engaging – ‘This Land Is Your Land’ has the frothy cantor of a jaunting car on a soft day, and ‘Jesus’ Chariot’ is a drunken church service hoedown-hybrid that could do with a little divine intervention or a lot more alcohol. Unpredictable, at times inconsistent, but never dull, this album is of its creator and begs the question: what will he do next?