Neil Young and Promise of the Real
The Visitor

'A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!' (Richard III, William Shakespeare)

Sometimes even giants fall, and when that happens, they make a lot of noise. However, since in the case of Neil Young, 'noise' has always been a defining characteristic of his career as a musician and something to which, being a perfectionist, he has dedicated his whole existence, in this specific case we can say that the fall of the 'giant' has made very little noise. Too little.

Honestly, I expected it. I knew that this time Uncle Neil wouldn't hit the mark because the signals coming from listening to the first album with Promise of the Real (the live album 'Earth' released in June 2016), the band that has been accompanying him live for a few years and led by one of Willie Nelson's sons, Lukas, were absolutely negative.

Certainly, the comparison with the power of the sound of the 'horse' (the Crazy Horses') would have been untenable for anyone, but those negative sensations, which after listening to 'The Visitor' (Reprise Records) become certainties, clearly tell us that something in this collaboration doesn't work.

'The Visitor' is an ugly album, poorly arranged, and played even worse. It's particularly the more rock pieces that are absolutely disappointing. Starting from the first track 'Already Great' with an almost symphonic chorus and a use of choruses that is certainly questionable; 'Fly By Night'; the improbable funk groove of 'Stand Tall' interrupted by Queen-like triumphalism; the eight minutes of the country-western ballad 'Carnival', half Morricone, and half Bolero. In all cases, moreover, the sound of the guitars is almost strangled, particularly that of the solo parts. This also happens in 'Diggin' A Hole', a blues in the style of Muddy Waters revisited by Nick Cave, and 'When Bad Got Good', a small spoken-word glimpse in the style of Tom Waits.

It goes a bit better with the acoustic pieces. The ballad 'Almost Always' and 'Change Of Heart' (the chords are the same as 'Xmas In February' by Lou Reed) where a certain similarity with Willie Nelson's style can be heard, the ten minutes of 'Forever'. But it's too little, and the almost Christmas-like orchestral arrangements of 'Children Of Destiny' are certainly the worst thing Neil Young has ever done in his long career.

Were it not for the release of that brilliant album 'Peace Trail', a work conceived and written on the fly by Neil and recorded together with Jim Keltner and Paul Bushnell to support the Indian nation and particularly on the occasion of the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access (a protest that surely marked the first months of Trump's presidency), we could talk about an artist in crisis. But fortunately, despite this 'fall', things are not exactly like that.