It’s staggering to realize that Neil Young has been making music for close to two complete generations now, and even more so when you take into account that the quality of his work has been so consistently impressive. In the fifty years that have passed since helping found Buffalo Springfield, he has managed to already be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame twice. Young has served as a rabble-rouser, fighting for the common man, for sanity, for peace and for the opportunity to speak to the world. On his newest release, EARTH, with his band, Promise Of The Real, he’s decided that the best way to get his message is live and uninterrupted.

On the double live album EARTH, the fiercely iconoclastic Young shows he is still incapable of doing anything the normal way. The many windmills he’s tilted at over the years range from payola, toy trains and alternative fuels. Buy an iPod like 99% of the planet? No thanks, I’ll just make my own. Time to release a double disc live album? Cool! But let’s be sure to overdub a bunch of animal noises and a human choir afterward.! Then again, this is an artist who released a concept album of discordant noise to fulfill a record contract and thumb his nose at his record label, so fans should be pleased that he chose a more positive, but still unique, way to elevate what is usually a by-the-numbers endeavor to a higher plane of artistic achievement.

In a sense he is sampling life itself, and laying it into the mix like any other instrumental track. The crashing thunder and rain that come alive at the start of the album’s initial track, “Mother Earth,” give way to a bayou-like sonic landscape that itself falls in behind a breathy harmonica. Layers of transitions transform the stark live performance into what seems like a blessing, a musical incantation of intention. Using the animal sounds as thematic hints and harbingers of the music to come, EARTH is a seamless mixing of the natural world and the concert stage.

Though recorded during his recent Monsanto Years tour, there are songs from throughout his extensive catalog represented here, reaching as far back as 1970’s After The Gold Rush with other prominent stops between. In Promise Of The Real, Young has found himself a set of dream collaborators: a group of earnest, intellectual players whose musical vocabulary and dexterity defy expectations. Perhaps it has something to do with pedigree, with a pair of Willie Nelson‘s sons and demonstrating a far rockier approach than their legendary father. They’re quite good and very capable of delivering a solid back bone that has the aging guitarist looking and sounding feisty.

Not afraid to shy away from the longer tracks, EARTH has versions of “The Monsanto Years” and “Big Box” that clock in at nearly ten minutes. But that doesn’t touch the indulgence of the twenty-eight minute rendition of the tune “Love And Only Love.” Acting as both the centerpiece and finale, the song shows Young at his absolute guitar best, aided by fellow six-stringer. Allowing the tune to bubble rise and fall gives Young spare musical real estate to make his plea for love. The echoes fade to a chorus of nature itself cheering and having the last musical word on the piece. 

While EARTH has an original concept and sterling execution, there is a flaw or two to be found. The biggest drawback of the artistic conceit of rewriting the performance afterwards is that it makes lies of the cheers heard throughout the discs. The audiences reactions are used for different purposes than originally intended. It’s a minor quibble, but it does raise an interesting question. Is Young, essentially remixing his own material? Has he become the mellowest DJ ever, dropping actual thunder instead of synthesized bass?

Whatever your viewpoint, Young has created something new, and for that he is to be applauded. His music sounds as vital as ever with the fresh blood of his backing band and the addition of deeper sonic territory is a welcome softening of Young’s often rough edges. He stays away from merely aping the barnyard flourishes of The Beatles tune “Good Morning Good Morning,” making them more a legitimate piece of the musical equation. They rise and fall and crowd out the manufactured to show the sheer power of the natural. The choral colorings provide a sense of not only grandeur but aspiration.

The songs that make up EARTH are all laments and messages in bottles. Messages sang by a familiar, raspy voice accompanied by a signature sound and a pack of hungry young road dogs. And in the lead as the alpha he has always been, Young shows to impressive effect that old dogs can learn new tricks, especially for a cause they truly believe in.