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| Artist: Neil Young
Label: Warner
Category: Music
List Price: £15.99
Buy New: £9.78
You Save: £6.21 (39%)
New (42) Used (6) from £4.99
Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 9161
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.4 x 5.1 x 0.5
MPN: 348220
UPC: 093624990642
EAN: 0093624990642
ASIN: B000VQQO3K
Release Date: October 22, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 6 to 10 days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Neil's Back December 1, 2007
I always look forward to a release from Neil Young - listening to his music over the past 20 years I'm just constantly amazed at his output. This release just exceeds all my expectations - if I had to try and sum this work up in one word it would have to be GENIUS.
Buy it you will not be disappointed!
 "watch" out for the DVD November 18, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
The music is great ofcourse, but a little warning concerning the DVD is allowed here, I think.
As much as I appreciated the DVD "Living with war" and "Heart of gold",I did not get the same feeling about the DVD accompaning "Chrome Dreams". So for you guys out there who are having doubt about buying the CD-version or the one with the DVD included: forget about the DVD. You will never ever put it on after having seen it once (well, the first 5 minutes only I guess. That is when I gave up...)
What does the DVD show then? Well: rust, rust and more rust on an old American car. It's been nicely documented and all, and it's good photography... But who needs this on an extra DVD?
After having spend 600 euro's last week to get my old '85 Volkswagen Transporter van rust-free again, I certainly don't!!!
J.
Continuing the Tradition November 17, 2007
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Back in 1970 my mate played me After The Goldrush. Some time later I stayed up late one night and listened to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's Four-Way Street on Kid (now David) Jensen's Radio Luxemburg programme, heard Harvest, and bought Heart Of Gold on a second-hand single. Young himself did a live show broadcast on the BBC, and a subsequent girlfriend of mine had CSN&Y's Déjà Vu, which got played quite a lot, though mostly for Graham Nash's paean to Joni Mitchell, Our House.
I then put Neil Young and his mates away in a cupboard until the next millennium, when on a whim I bought first Goldrush, then Harvest, Harvest Moon, and Silver & Gold. So far, so folk/country/soft rock.
Buying Four Way Street and really listening to it, as opposed to dozing intermittently during a crackly radio broadcast, made me realise there was something more to Neil than a laid back West Coast sound. But imagine the effect when I bought Decades and first heard Like A Hurricane. I was, as the man says on that song, "blown away". Those of you who have followed the twists and turns as they've happened can only imagine the almost orgasmic euphoria of hearing that guitar lick for the first time three decades after its first release, dispelling in one stroke all those years' preconceptions.
Subsequent purchases - Mirror Ball springs to mind; Old Ways too - further testified to the modality of the protean Mr Young's oeuvre.
Chrome Dreams II, the work of a man of pensionable age, a CD/ DVD accompanied by a booklet whose artwork looks like the publicity material for a very groovy old folks' home, in its own small way continues the tradition.
Note "small way". There's enough here that's familiar to render it close to the comfort food zone, so you could trace the lineage of opening track Bluebird back through Silver And Gold to Harvest Moon and Goldrush, and Dirty Old Man sounds like recycled Piece Of Crap (aficionados will know of what I speak, even if they don't actually agree).
But while my NY collection is one of my largest, I don't think there's anything in there to quite compare with Ordinary People, a kind of Stax-on-acid, I guess, with raging brass and howling guitars, which makes it a neat fusion of Are You Passionate (soul), Prairie Wind (brass) and Broken Arrow (guitars), but with some Freedom (Crime In The City) thrown into the lyrics insofar as they deal with very prosaic subjects, but this time the folks are striving for good.
At 18 minutes this is about as long as any Neil Young track I can think of bar Cowgirl In The Sand on Road Rock Vol 1 (anyone know what happened to Vol 2? Is it with Chrome Dreams I?), and has the same wailing guitars and false endings. There are also some great instrumental breaks - on tenor sax, not at all like that on Crime In The City, and muted trumpet, only precedented for this artist on She's A Healer from Are You Passionate, to my knowledge, though I admit that at 26 CDs my collection is less than complete. This guy is Prolific!
In Shining Light we are treated to the quavering NY voice we got a lot of on Silver & Gold, to the backing of what could be a straight 3/4 waltz but may be in 6/8, interrupted by some nice guitar part-way through.
Spirit Road for me is the heartbeat of the collection, and certainly the one I've been singing in my head lately. Where Ordinary People has an element of anger and grit in the lyrics, Spirit Road is much more upbeat: you can sing it with a smile. Reminds me a little of Goin' Home from Are You Passionate rhythmically. But it's more different than similar.
And talking of Old Ways, which I did some time back, there's also Ever After, a slide-dominated country piece.
No Hidden Path, the other "long" track, is a nice laid back thrash which is both recognisably Neil Young and certifiably new. It's a chance to lean gently but firmly into a chunky guitar riff, occasionally relieved by vocals or a straight ahead guitar break. Delicious. Classic stuff. And long enough to satisfy the appetite but not so long it outlives its welcome.
The closing track, The Way, has all the ingredients to be mawkish, including a kiddie choir, a piano and some old geezer singing lead. Clive Dunn? Granddad? It's not. It's a thing of beauty.
2007 has been a great year for music, with releases by Joni Mitchell (how unexpected was that?), Lucinda Williams and Springsteen, a superb solo sax adventure by Steve Coleman, and even some new Coltrane - from beyond the grave. Chrome Dreams II stands up there with all of them. I wouldn't want to say definitively which is best, but there will be days when Neil Young is it!
Classic Neil October 30, 2007
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I've listened to this album at least once a day since I bought it, and it just gets better with every listen.
Approach with caution October 29, 2007
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
Well, another album from NY that divides opinion, ranging from claims of 'classic' to a bit of a mess. As a pretty devoted fan myself, I'm sad to say I err towards the latter and really question the point of this release. After the truly excellent live sets from the Fillmore and Massey Hall - dating back to the early 70's - and the mouthwatering prospect of the Archives in 2008 - I'm wondering what NY is hoping to gain with Chrome Dreams 2. If it was simply an opportunity to get the fabulous 'Ordinary People' onto an official studio release I would have thought it better to hold it back for Archives as precious little else on CD2 captures the attention.
After the first two quite pleasent but forgetable tracks, 'OP' simply dominates the whole affair thereafter. It is 18 minutes of musical and lyrical magic. Strange it was held back from 'This Notes For You' where it would have fit so much better IMO. The problem is that everything else (perhaps bar 'Spirit Road' and 'No Hidden Path') seems a little bland and trite in comparison. Perhaps the overall album would hang together more if it was the penultimate or final track on the album (Stephen Stills went for this option to great effect with the awesome 'Spanish Suite'on his last album 'Man Alive').And the mix of styles mentioned in other reviews means that for me, the album doesn't gel. Debatable no doubt, but classic Young albums like Goldrush, Tonight's The Night, Zuma and Ragged Glory shared a cohesion and completeness that CD2 seems to lack. At best, this release has the feel of 'American Stars and Bars' and at the worst its like a music mag free sampler.
NY is a true great - of that there can be little doubt. He has produced and inspired some of the most wonderful and relevant music from the 60s,70's (miss out the 80's) and 90's. I'm really not convinced that his output over the past few years warrants the kind of adultation and unreserved praise it has received. I'm sure he doesn't want to keep recycling 'Living With War' ad infinitum but I sense there is a lot better music in him than this.
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