Consumer Guide Album

Neil Young & Crazy Horse: World Record [Reprise, 2022]
Absolutely this is a rather generic 21st-century Neil Young album, and the auteur's wacky and indeed ecologically dubious decision to release music that would fit easily onto a single disc as a double-CD is further complicated by his decision to adjust the list price to match. Yet as a generic 21st-century Neil Young album it shares two rare and enjoyable virtues. One, in Young's hands the simple harmonic structures he's explored not to say exploited for half a century continue to generate simple yet endearing melodies whose similarities to previous Neil Young melodies I leave it to the many guys who've committed his catalogue to memory to celebrate or complain about. Two, inconsistencies regardless he cares about the fate of the planet--again and again it's what he feels compelled to sing about. B+