NEIL YOUNG - Second Song

Despite recently cancelling his European tour due to fatigue, Neil Young shows no sign of slowing down.
Between live releases, archival digs and new recording projects, the Canadian singer-songwriter is a relentless music-making machine, ready to throw himself back into the fray with a new band: Chrome Hearts.
The latest piece of the puzzle is "Second Song", his second album released in 2026 and preceded by the double live set "As Time Explodes". At 81, his is a story entrusted to a monumental discography and a commendable political and artistic consistency, to the point that the actual weight of his new releases within the contemporary market almost becomes beside the point. Where the previous "Talkin To The Trees" pushed a situationist attitude to the extreme – sacrificing formal elegance on the altar of spontaneity and integrity – on "Second Song" that same expressive urgency turns into pure carpe diem charm.
Neil Young remains the same tough-minded idealist fighting the streaming giants like Spotify and Amazon and calling out ecological collapse, but here he rediscovers himself as a musician keenly aware of the fleeting, magical nature of a song.

What makes the difference this time is the quality of the songwriting. The record houses some of the most inspired tracks of the last decade, starting with the gorgeous, epic title track: an acoustic ballad with a lazy, indolent charm that effortlessly holds its own against milestones like "Comes A Time" and "Harvest", touched by that same naive magic that secured the Canadian's place in history. That Young is in a state of grace is confirmed precisely by the more recent passages. The pained melancholy of "Day After Day" evokes absolute classics like "Helpless" or "My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)", with organ and piano polishing an excellent melodic idea. On the opposite front, the fierce anti-Trump invective of "Soon I Might Be Going" ("The president was on TV saying everything was going great, but he's tearing down the old White House") unfolds over electric guitar chords that seem to melt on contact with the scorching lines of the lyrics.
This is a sonic epic that reveals writing far more dynamic and sharply focused than "Talkin To The Trees", which, for all its grit, often came across as messy and sloppy. On "Second Song" that shortcoming only resurfaces in the naive country of "Casting Me Away From You" and the limping "Earth Girl".

Strange as it may sound, this album could well reconcile the artist with the audience that seemed to have already relegated him to the past, paying more attention to archival releases than new recordings. "Second Song", by contrast, offers rock-solid arguments: a memorable title track and two songs worthy of past glories. It hardly matters that the closing slot goes to "I'll Love You Forever", a minor track already salvaged for the Archive series. We're still in desperate need of artists as honest and urgent as Neil Young.

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20/09/2026