NEIL YOUNG : COASTAL SOUNDTRACK

1. I Am The Ocean
2. Comes A Time
3. Love Earth
4. Prime Of Life
5. Throw Your Hatred Down
6. Vampire Blues
7. When I Hold You In My Arms
8. Expecting To Fly
9. Song X
10. I Am A Child
11. Don't Forget Love

Label : Reprise

Venue : various USA

Recording Date : June-July 2023

Release Date : April 18, 2025

Length : 41:09

Review (Louder Sound) : When Neil Young ventured back onto the stage in 2023 after a four-year break – the longest of his career – it felt tentative, as if the training wheels were back on. He promised deep cuts only (in the end, Heart Of Gold was aired almost nightly, as was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s classic Ohio), but the unusually atmospheric album of the tour reverts to the original script and the big hits are nowhere to be heard. Instead, I’m The Ocean, recorded with Pearl Jam in 1995, is slowed down and played as it might have been at Carnegie Hall in 1970, Young’s lonesome harmonica wail unmistakable. Love Earth, first taped with Crazy Horse in 2022, is turned into a campfire singalong, the audience as much a part of the act as Young himself. Buffalo Springfield’s originally jaunty I Am A Child is now sung in a surprisingly effective, almost whispered growl. And When I Hold You In My Arms, a slightly lumpen filler on 2002’s Are You Passionate?, is tender and transfixing, with Young’s on-tour tech Bob Rice adding gently tinkling piano to his boss’s guitar.

Review (Flood Magazine) : From the look, sound, and frequency of his releases within the last six years, it seems Neil Young has never met a musical moment of his that he didn’t share with the world. Which is great, considering how legacy artists beyond he and Elton John treat new and archival music so preciously. So, then, we have Coastal: Young’s fresh look at his 2023 solo tour, his first outing post-COVID, with Shakey alone playing guitars, piano, and harmonica (save for pianist Bob Rice, who truly uplifts “When I Hold You in My Arms” to a thing of miniaturized divinity), along with its concert-doc filming helmed by wife/director Daryl Hannah. I’ll call Young’s umpteenth live album a necessity, because he manages to take the wall of scuzz that was Crazy Horse’s recent output “Love Earth” and “Don’t Forget Love” and funnels their original recordings’ noisiness into a tangled solo setting. I didn’t care for the initial renditions of these newer songs, but now I do—plain and simple, just like these tracks. “Vampire Blues”—yes, that’s what this is: an anti-corporate takedown where sucking blood from the earth (“Sell you twenty barrels worth”) is tantamount to soul murder. Young, here, sounds as committed to the cause as we know he is. That doesn’t happen every time he crafts a scathing screed as such. And familiar hits such as the lilting country of “Comes a Time,” the small, sweet “I Am a Child,” and the serial soulful “Expecting to Fly” (honestly, three of my all-time NY favorites) are solidly rendered and worth the price of admission alone. Listening to this warmly mixed soundtrack (thanks, Niko Bolas) brings chills, and if Neil Young can still make old long-lived victories chilling and vivid, good on him.

Review (Mojo) : Two summers ago, on his first tour in four years, Neil Young played a series of solo shows at relatively-intimate outdoor venues along the West Coast. His set was largely songs he rarely played live, and the shows were remarkably warm and chatty. On the road with him he took a heap of instruments, an electric train-set, an old fireplace, and his wife Daryl Hannah, who kept the camera rolling onstage and off. Part concert film, part home-video-on-wheels - Neil and bus driver JD, perfectly happy nattering about nothing in particular like two old blokes on a road trip - it has the same warmth and chattiness as the gigs. Hard to think of another live Neil Young movie where he seems both a little unsure of himself and so contented. The accompanying live album of 11 songs opens with Mirror Ball's I'm The Ocean and closes with Barn's Don't Forget Love.