Only five short months have elapsed since Neil Young’s last album, a live collection called Earth, hit the marketplace, and already the classic rocker is back with a batch of ten new songs. The new album, titled Peace Trail, finds Young mostly in stripped-down protest singer mode, strumming his acoustic guitar while backed up by consummate pros Jim Keltner and Paul Bushnell on drums and bass. Neil later overdubbed blasts of electric guitar, distorted harmonica, vocoder-flavored backing vocals, and mellow keyboard, but the album has a distinctly live, unpolished sound, like you’re sitting there in the room as the band works out the arrangements.
The album kicks off with the title track, “Peace Trail.” It’s a catchy rocker that acts as a personal state-of-the-union for Neil, who sounds palpably weary but vows to keep spreading a message of peace and progress.
This attitude of persistence continues into the next track,”Can’t Stop Workin’,” but the song’s lyrics are opaque enough that fans wondering about Neil’s reaction to his recent divorce from his wife of three decades-plus, Pegi, might stumble upon a few clues buried in there too. Neil works to keep from thinking about the divorce too hard, and in the tongue-in-cheek closing track, “My New Robot,” he turns to online shopping to distract himself. In the tender “Glass Accident,” he turns the everyday breaking of a glass into a metaphor for impotently watching a relationship come undone: “Too many pieces for me to clean up/ So I left a warning message by the door/ “Danger” on a scary skull and crossbones/ A piece of paper on the floor.”
The personal is political, maybe, but Neil, as ever, feels perfectly at ease making his songs explicitly about politics. “Terrorist Suicide Hang-Gliders” makes a series of sly digs at uninformed xenophobes, who shun and fear what is unfamiliar. Building off the environmental concerns of Earth, Peace Trail has two songs about the Dakota Access Pipeline, “Indian Givers” and “Show Me,” which both offset their low-key drum-circle grooves with insistent refrains, “I wish somebody would share the news,” and “Show me,” as Neil’s achy vocals prod listeners into paying attention to the situation he’s describing, rather than just bopping their heads along to the songs.
Police violence provides the focal point for “Texas Rangers” and the story-song “John Oaks.” The latter is clearly designed to evoke the great protest narrative songs of the ’60s, like “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” or “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” but its description of a laid-back farmer who is killed for standing up for his workers lacks the fire and fury of those earlier triumphs, making the whole thing feel pat.
With its overall solid set of songs and low-key ramshackle charm, Peace Trail will no doubt satisfy long-time Neil Young fans. But the album’s approach is idiosyncratic enough that I would be surprised if it snagged very many new listeners.
Neil Young’s Peace Trail is now available on CD, download, and streaming. A vinyl edition is due in early January.
Justin Remer makes movies, directs music videos, and plays in the bands Duck the Piano Wire and Elastic No-No Band when he is not writing movie reviews. His folk-rock documentary MAKING LOVERS & DOLLARS is currently streaming on Amazon.