Peace Trail

Personnel: Neil Young (guitar); Joe Yankee (electric harp, pump organ); Bob Rice (vocoder); Jim Keltner (drums).
Audio Mixer: John Hanlon .
Recording information: Shangrila Zuma.
Director: Elliot Roberts.
The 21st century revived Neil Young's radical spirit and, along with it, his sense of musical adventure. These two strands converge on Peace Trail, a rickety record written and cut in the wake of his 2016 live album, Earth. Neil wrote Peace Trail quickly and recorded it even faster, pushing through ten songs in four days with the support of ace drummer Jim Keltner and bassist Paul Bushnell. According to Bushnell, most of the album consists of first or second takes but Peace Trail sounds like it entirely comprises rehearsal tapes, with the rhythm section lagging behind as they follow Young's basic chord changes. In form, almost all of the ten songs are folky protest numbers but Neil slashes through his hippie haze with shards of overamplified harmonica, guitar squalls, and vocoders, the modern world intruding on his melancholy reveries and subdued anger. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine