release date: Jun. 29, 2015
format: cd
[album rate: 3 / 5] [3,18]
producer: Neil Young & John Hanlon
label: Reprise Records - nationality: Canada
Track highlights: 1. "A New Day for Love" - 3. "People Want to Hear About Love" (live) - 6. "Workin' Man" (live) - 8. "Monsanto Years" (live)
36th studio album by Neil Young released as 'Neil Young + The Promise of the Real' is something as antique as a protest album. The band 'Lukas & Promise of the Real' is made up of frontman Lukas Autry Nelson (son of Willie Nelson) on guitar & backing vocals, Corey McCormick on bass, Tato Melgar on percussion & backing vocals and with Anthony Logerfo on drums. Furthermore the band feature Lukas' brother Micah Nelson on electric guitar, electric charango and on backing vocals.
Stylistically, it's nothing new as they play country rock and folk rock. Some of the songs a more hard rock-shaped and mostly just sound like Young with Crazy Horse. Apparently, Young's long-time friendship with the Nelson family bound them stronger together after the 2014 Farm Aid project and paved the way for a collaboration album.
The protest thing here is against the American agricultural corporation Monsanto, which has found itself involved in many controversies - on the American continent, in Asia and in Europe most of which apparently dealing with the company's role in the handling of chemical waste and pesticides, and its production of GMO-related (Gene-Modified) crops and seeds as well as PCB-material. All of which sounds pretty nasty.
Anyway, the album turns out a bit like Neil Young has landed his freight ship on a subject that has caught his attention. He is a farmer - or: he is running a farm and has been preoccupied with ecological farming and ideas of 'green' products throughout the years. He has also been working on making car engines run on various types of energy, and in my mind, he sort of does whatever he wants. Lately, he has been highly productive musically - putting lots of energy into releasing new material, as if he ponders on when to leave the planet, and whenever something crosses his path, he puts "the plane down" and deals with it before taking off to another project that make him turn his head. This is a bit like that. Having been involved in Farm Aid, he perhaps felt like he needed to pay tribute to that idea by releasing a studio album in that "ballgame". And here it is!
The album mostly gained positive reviews, although, I don't find it that good and feel much like Jon Dolan of Rolling Stone. The great songs are absent and at best some compositions sound much like Neil with Crazy Horse, but others just sound like old-school protest songs without much else to offer than some lines about what Monsanto did wrong, which make me think more of Neil's old collaborative project-band CSNY - as they didn't always find the common ground. Having said that, Neil is Neil Young, and he can do whatever he wants in this world, and this is a project that he engages in and that ain't bad.
[ allmusic.com 3,5 / 5, The Guardian 5 / 5, Rolling Stone 3 / 5 stars ]
