NEIL YOUNG + PROMISE OF THE REAL : THE VISITOR

1. Already Great
2. Fly By Night Deal
3. Almost Always
4. Stand Tall
5. Change Of Heart
6. Carnival
7. Diggin' A Hole
8. Children Of Destiny
9. When Bad Got Good
10. Forever

Label : Reprise

Length : 51:10

Release Date : December 1, 2017

Review (AllMusic) : Like many citizens of the world, Neil Young didn't handle the electoral events of 2016 with ease. Already leaning toward a state of constant cryptic protest - he managed to turn his 2016 live album, Earth, into an ecological rallying cry - he decided to record an entire album of outrage at the Orange One in 2017, roping in his new backing band, Promise of the Real, for support. The Visitor never disguises Young's disgust with the direction America is headed. Neil calls out Trump for destroying the things he holds dear and he peppers the album with twists on rallying cries from the 2016 election: the record opens up with a declaration that America is "Already Great," and by the end, Young and Promise of the Real are chanting "Lock Him Up" in an echo of the chant Michael Flynn led at the Republican National Convention in the summer of 2016. All of these touches give The Visitor specificity and immediacy, but it's hardly an album of stark folk songs. Young tries a little bit of everything here, murmuring along with a strummed acoustic, stumbling through a blues shuffle, hiring a choir and orchestra to weigh down "Children of Destiny," hamming it up with his band for an eight-minute dustbowl epic called "Carnival." Every one of these constant detours is interesting, thanks in large part to Promise of the Real. Where Crazy Horse lumbered, the Promise are fleet on their feet, so they're able to lend a sense of adventure to The Visitor, and its musicality is what's tantalizing about the album - it's just supple enough to highlight how Young isn't bothering to get to the second draft of his songs. What lasts with The Visitor are texture and asides, how the band is able to elevate the songs to seem like they matter. Inspected individually, it all falls apart. Young doesn't mold his melodies or thoughts into something grander than impulse, which is why The Visitor seems fascinating upon the first listen, but tiresome upon repeats. Neil is making music for the moment and he doesn't much care if it lasts beyond that day or not, and while living in the moment is a good way to get through life, it doesn't do much for albums.

Review (Humo) : 72 is hij en nog steeds scherper dan zo'n dure messenset van Porsche. Op 1 december opende hij met enige fanfare zijn digitale archieven: een gigantische multimediale bron van vermaak voor fans - en wie dat niet is, kan het hier eens komen uitleggen. 'The Visitor' is zijn ik-weet-niet-hoeveelste plaat en ze klinkt meteen vertrouwd: typische Youngiaanse powerakkoorden worden afgewisseld met melancholieke mondharmonica's en cowboyritmes. Altijd blijft hij de kritische Canadees, ook over zijn geliefde Verenigde Staten, nu geleid door een 'game show host who has to brag and has to boast about tearing down the things that I hold dear'. Promise of the Real, zijn nieuwe Crazy Horse met enkele zoons van Willie Nelson, brengt hem in een zetel naar de meet. Hoe mooi ik dat allemaal vind. Just what the doctor ordered.

Review (Rolling Stone Magazine) : Neil Young's latest LP with heartland-rock band Promise of the Real opens with "Already Great," where the guitars cut like rusty plows and anti-Trump invective becomes bitter tribute: "You're the promise land/The helping hand/No wall. No hate. No fascist U.S.A." That sense of cranky rage and ageless idealism are all over The Visitor. On the somber folk shuffle "Almost Always," he complains about "livin' with a game show host," while the forcefully hard-grooving "Fly By Night Deal" is sung (partly) in the voice of a pipeline foreman bringing wreckage to the wilderness. Young detours into blues on "Diggin' a Whole" and absurdist eccentricity on the eight-minute "Carnival," spinning a surreal circus allegory over a south-of-the-border saunter. Even weirder is "Children of Destiny," a ragefully didactic sing-along recorded with a 56-piece orchestra that sounds like a grunge anthem lost in the soundtrack to a Disney musical. But the album ends on well-worn ground with the folk prayer "Forever," the kind of song he's been writing for decades, stretching into 10 minutes of frayed hope for his fellow man. "Earth is like a church without a preacher/The people have to pray for themselves," he sings, true to a messy vision of democracy that remains as endearing as ever.

Review (Pitchfork) : While still pointedly political, Neil Young's latest with Promise of the Real takes a more freewheeling, macro look at the world and becomes more centered than his recent albums. At the age of 72, Neil Young has forgone most of his contemporaries' chosen tenures. For the most part, he still operates exactly how he has since the 1970s, with new work arriving constantly and chaotically in bursts of inspiration, with little logic dictating what gets released and what doesn't. Over the last decade, reuniting with Crazy Horse has proven as likely to inspire new music as, say, buying a new car, or hanging out for an afternoon in Jack White's recording booth. Even if his hit-or-miss ratio has tipped, it's hard to think of an artist who's stayed truer to their muse for so long. When visualizing the span of his career, Young landed on the image a messy filing cabinet-cluttered and spilling over with information. The Visitor, Neil Young's 39th record, is a sprawling and boundless project. Teaming again with Willie Nelson's sons Lukas and Micah and their band Promise of the Real, it harkens back to records like 1989's Freedom, when Young's wandering interests stood proudly in defiance of cohesion. As evidenced by its first single-the artfully awkward cut-and-paste stomp "Already Great"-The Visitor often plays like Young's impassioned response to the first year of the Trump administration. The president's slogans and catchphrases are lobbed back at him in songs like "Already Great" and "When Bad Got Good," while "Stand Tall" takes aim at a "boy king" who refutes scientific fact to spew hate. While its topical lyrics stand out, The Visitor isn't so easily summarized. This is not simply a collection of protest songs, and even its more pointed tracks tend to zoom out, incorporating political observations as stray thoughts, not thesis statements. In the lapping "Almost Always," Young addresses a "game show host who has to brag and has to boast 'bout tearin' down the things that I hold dear." But the mood passes; by the end of the song, he's urging us to consider instead the mating pattern of birds. If Young's recent work has felt like a series of hard-headed dives into his pet obsessions-more interesting for simply existing than for actually listening to-then The Visitor is more all-encompassing, and as a result, more centered.