Though he never really slowed down at any point,
Neil Young
stayed on an especially prolific streak as the 2010s bled into the 2020s. In addition to a steady rollout of archival material, official versions of long-bootlegged shows, and other miscellanea,
Neil
has produced albums of entirely new material at a rate unmatched by most artists in his age bracket who have been at it for as long as he has.
World Record
follows quickly behind the mellow rocking of 2021's
Barn
, and again finds
Young
ably backed by his longest-running comrades,
Crazy Horse
. This time around, however, the band worked with producer
Rick Rubin
, capturing everything live in the studio and sticking to an analog-heavy recording process.
is an album built of unlikely combinations that somehow work.
Rubin
's muscular and often barnstorming production style lends itself unexpectedly well to the off-the-cuff recording method, pushing
's vocals to the front of the mixes but making lots of space for the songs to breathe. Instead of the ragged rocking
Neil Young and Crazy Horse
listeners might be expecting from pretty much any of their past eras, the performances here are often gentle and marked by expanded instrumentation. Squeezebox, pump organ, and accordion show up on multiple songs, leading "Walkin' on the Road (To the Future)" and joining with tack piano and sweet vocal harmonies on "This Old Planet." Softly swaying album opener "Love Earth" is a classic
composition, with the kind of uncluttered structure and bittersweet melodies that gave some of his most memorable songs their impact.
rocks out a little bit, though, jamming through a stompy distorted blues on "The World (Is in Trouble Now)" and pairing an oddly pleasant mix of air organ chords and blasts of psychedelic guitar tones on "The Wonder Won't Wait." Then there's "Chevrolet," a 15-minute full-powered rager and one of the only songs on the album whose lyrics aren't focused on environmental themes. Again, on a record primarily concerned about preserving the Earth's fragile ecosystems, a mind-bending epic rocker about how cool a car is shouldn't make sense, but like many of the other weird combinations on
, it does. You can hear someone exclaim "That was fun!" off-mic as the song ends, and that spirit of fun and togetherness carries even the heaviest moments of the record, making it another valuable example of the unique magic
and
keep tapping into, even so many years on. ~ Fred Thomas