Neil Young
Coastal: The Soundtrack
REPRISE
From the look, sound, and frequency of his releases within the last six years, it seems Neil Young has never met a musical moment of his that he didn’t share with the world. Which is great, considering how legacy artists beyond he and Elton John treat new and archival music so preciously. So, then, we have Coastal: Young’s fresh look at his 2023 solo tour, his first outing post-COVID, with Shakey alone playing guitars, piano, and harmonica (save for pianist Bob Rice, who truly uplifts “When I Hold You in My Arms” to a thing of miniaturized divinity), along with its concert-doc filming helmed by wife/director Daryl Hannah.
I’ll call Young’s umpteenth live album a necessity, because he manages to take the wall of scuzz that was Crazy Horse’s recent output “Love Earth” and “Don’t Forget Love” and funnels their original recordings’ noisiness into a tangled solo setting. I didn’t care for the initial renditions of these newer songs, but now I do—plain and simple, just like these tracks. “Vampire Blues”—yes, that’s what this is: an anti-corporate takedown where sucking blood from the earth (“Sell you twenty barrels worth”) is tantamount to soul murder. Young, here, sounds as committed to the cause as we know he is. That doesn’t happen every time he crafts a scathing screed as such.
And familiar hits such as the lilting country of “Comes a Time,” the small, sweet “I Am a Child,” and the serial soulful “Expecting to Fly” (honestly, three of my all-time NY favorites) are solidly rendered and worth the price of admission alone. Listening to this warmly mixed soundtrack (thanks, Niko Bolas) brings chills, and if Neil Young can still make old long-lived victories chilling and vivid, good on him.
