By Douglas Heselgrave
Neil Young has been an artist for his whole life. He’s released a record almost every year for sixty years. He’s toured generously. Solo acoustic, CSNY, Stray Gators, Crazy Horse, Blue Notes, Promise of the Real, Chrome Hearts: more than almost any other performer, he’s thoroughly explored a musical palette that is uniquely his own. He’s run through every chord sequence imaginable and tied them to lyrics that have expressed a full emotional and subjective consciousness of what it means to be alive in the world.
Unlike, say, The Rolling Stones whose music exists in perpetual adolescence, Young’s subject matter has evolved as he’s aged. From early songs like ‘Birds’ and ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ that explored young love and its disappointments to mid period work (“My Boy,” “You’re My Girl”) that celebrated family life and the rewards of domesticity and right through later songs like “Love Earth” and “Green Is Blue” that confirm his dedication to environmental issues, Neil Young’s music has always expressed exactly where his feet are planted at the time they were written.
Six decades of Neil Young’s songs have passed, seemingly in the blink of an eye. I was born in 1962. Because my life pretty essentially matches Young’s career chronology, the aches, pains and arthritis I feel as I’m writing this might be working its way into how I feel about these new musical offerings. If, as they say, life follows the seasons, ‘Coastal’ is a portrait of Neil Young in late autumn. To use his recurring lunar imagery, it’s a snapshot of another phase of the moon.
On the surface, ‘Coastal’ can be seen as nothing more than another collection of solo live recordings. He’s released lots of those over the years. But, it’s a lot more than that. When I heard Neil on the ‘Coastal’ tour in Ridgefield, Washington, it was a very different Neil Young who took the stage. The last time I’d heard him before was in 2019. Following the scantiest of setlist plans, he delivered two acoustic shows in Vancouver that featured some of the best acoustic picking and playing I’d ever heard. From beginning to end, both shows were breathtaking.
Something has changed in Young’s presentation since then. Listening to ‘Coastal’ reminds me of seeing Stephan Grapelli or Ravi Shankar near the end of their lives. They’d pared down their melodies, progressions and soloing to the bone in favour of a more spare and direct emotional communication of their music’s essence. It wasn’t virtuosity that was being shared. They’d done that for their whole lives. It was something deeper. It was an evocation of the creative process, itself. That’s what I hear on ‘Coastal.’ Young doesn’t wheel and swoop like he used to. His nimble fretwork has been mostly set aside, replaced by evocative strumming, expressed with his unique sense of timing. The emotional heart is still there, extracted and distilled to its essence. ‘Coastal’ is the portrait of the artist as an old man. And, it’s beautiful.
Of all the performances on ‘Coastal,’ ‘Throw Your Hatred Down’ offers the truest concentration of what Young’s music has always communicated to his listeners. It is a portrait of his life in music and everything he will leave us with. When we hear its last ringing notes, we will reminisce, ‘this is what he was all about.’
What’s perhaps most impressive is that Young has never embraced being an oldies act. The new music keeps coming. ‘Talking to the Trees’ features ten fresh songs that range through all of his stylistic preferences. There’s no sense asking if ‘Moving Ahead’ or ‘First Fires of Winter’ are as good as ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ or ‘Like A Hurricane.’ As I’ve said, Neil Young’s music paints a continuum, and his continued desire to find new ways to create and express himself should properly leave us breathless, with hat in hand.
Picasso made art into his nineties. His final works explored reduction, expressions of movement, cupidity and joy. We don’t line those late life offerings against ‘Guernica’ or ‘Les DeMoiselles D’Avignon.’ Such comparisons are meaningless.
Is every performance on ‘Coastal’ an expression of the best Neil Young’s given us? Does every song on ‘Talking to the Trees’ hit home? Those aren’t the questions to ask.
The American poet, Jim Harrison died at his writing desk. Matisse sketched at his deathbed.
Artists can’t help but create. Neil will make music until ‘daddy goes out walking’ for the last time.
‘Thank you’ is the appropriate response to both of these records. A hundred years from now, critics will say ‘this was the lion in winter.’ For now, these songs are good. They sound great in the car, out in the garden watching the sun go down. I feel fortunate that they’ve made it out into the world.
Look back for a moment. Yes, hits and misses, warts and blemishes, Neil Young’s output has been staggering. It’s 2025, not 1971. Immerse yourself in what is. Turn up ‘Talking to the Trees’ to eleven and listen till the very end.
About Doug:
Doug grew up in Canada and began his writing career at the Vancouver Sun. He then moved to Hong Kong where he taught and wrote for the South China Morning Post. He returned to Vancouver where he worked with new refugees coming to Canada and began writing full time for The Vancouver Sun, The Georgia Straight and more. He’s now retired but continues to write about music.
