If you think a whole album about his electric car was a bit much, by 2015 Neil wanted to do a whole album about the agribusiness Monsanto. And for some reason, none of the dozens of bands he had used in the past seemed to fir the bill, so Neil turned to a new group – The Promise of The Real. Prior to teaming with Neil, The Promise of The Real was mostly known (if it was known at all) for featuring Willie Nelson’s sons Lukas and Micah. I guess the Wallflowers were busy. They are a bit more polished than Crazy Horse, and not as country as their genetics might indicate, but who knows why Neil started playing with them so extensively, but by this point they were his main back-up band.
And being Neil’s main back-up band, he immediately ditched them for his next record Peace Trail, which was recorded with just sessions musicians Jim Keltner and Paul Bushnell. The lyrics were again stridently political – albeit less focused than The Monsanto Years, but other than that it was a pretty unremarkable record, with a few nice songs on it that got middling reviews and was mostly only bought by the few people left who were still paying attention to Neil Young.
He reunited with The Promise of The Real for The Visitor his third “crotchety old man railing against the downfall of society” record and his first seen Trump got elected, prompting Already Great. Otherwise this felt very indistinguishable from his last few records. The most interesting bit was a Brazilian samba number called Carnival.
Neil had started seeing Darryl Hannah at this point, and she wanted to make a movie called Paradox. So Neil and The Promise of The Real agreed to star in it. It’s a weird sci-fi Western about a society where men and women are completely separated (or something, I never actually watched it). There was also a soundtrack. Some of it was made of previously released material from Neil’s recent albums, plus a few new songs and some more instrumental noodling ala Dead Man for the actual score. It’s not great – but at least it doesn’t just sound like Neil yelling at the TV turned to FOX News in the retirement home living room.
The last full album we got from Neil was Colorado. Once again Neil reunites with Crazy Horse after an extended absence. I don’t know why Crazy Horse put up with it. Other than they can’t really get booked without Neil. I have no idea why Neil picked that state to name the album after. Much like Ragged Glory or Broken Arrow, it’s about what you expect from Neil and Crazy Horse at this point. Neil is far more interested in releasing old archival recording at this point than trying anything new musically. And it seems as though the audience and critics are far more interested in that as well. Even The Times, the EP that Neil released this year, was just a live-at-home re-recording of some old tunes – including a revamped version of 2000’s Looking For A Leader.
Neil’s slate looks really full of releases but they’re all old concert recordings that are just no being officially released. Maybe Neil’s got nothing much new to say. But every trying to predict or expect anything specific from Neil Young is always a crapshoot.