Ticket 2 Ride

Coastal

Coastal is a soundtrack to the Daryl Hannah-directed concert documentary of Neil Young’s 2023 solo tour. Hannah is of course, Young’s wife. The soundtrack was April 18, 2025. Interestingly, another album was made of his 2023 tour, Before and After, which has some (but not all) of the same songs, but there use different version. Coastal is the musical soundtrack to the film and contains different song versions from Before and After. Clear? Yeah, I’m not totally understanding either.

In any event, we will ignore Before and After, and only focus on Coastal. There’s something about Neil Young’s solo performances that seem more powerful and poignant than when he melts the arena with Crazy Horse or one of his other backing bands. People expect the volume and distortion from the Godfather of Grunge. However, some of his best live recordings were of his early 1970s solo acoustic performances. Thankfully, Young has released these live shows as part of his Archive Collections or as stand alone albums.

Coastal tracks:

1 “I’m The Ocean” (Live) from Mirrorball (1995) the album Young was backed by Pearl Jam. Here, it’s just Young.
2 “Comes A Time” (Live) from the album of the same name. Pretty faithful version.
3 “Love Earth” (Live) a singalong with the audience, from his 2022 album with Crazy Horse, World Record.
4 “Prime Of Life” (Live) from Sleeps With Angels (1994). Young on solo electric guitar.
5 “Throw Your Hatred Down” (Live) from Mirrorball (1995) Acoustic guitar and harmonica. Riveting song.
6 “Vampire Blues” (Live) from On the Beach (1974), a soaring, distorted version, just Young on electric guitar.
7 “When I Hold You In My Arms” (Live) A beautiful, piano song. From Are You Passionate (2002), Young plays electric guitar, he is accompanied on the piano by Bob Rice. Poignant and aching.
8 “Expecting To Fly” (Live) Recorded at soundcheck, Young at the piano. Beautiful. A Buffalo Springfield song.
9 “Song X” (Live) Another song from Mirrorball. Alone on his very distorted guitar, his vocal is almost drowned out.
10 “I Am A Child” (Live) Another Buffalo Springfield song. Tender, a simple confessional song. It never loses any impact.
11 “Don’t Forget Love” (Live) Only a snippet of a song from Barn (2021). Odd way to end the album.

Neil Young has released a lot of live albums through the years, or so it seems. This was a solo tour of theaters, and was his first post-COVID set of live dates. The shows gave his wife a chance to make a film about being on the road, and Young picks some ignored songs from his catalogue to play, including three from Mirrorball, an album I haven’t played since right after I bought it.

Coastal is not the best Neil Young performance. The recording feels somewhat crudely recorded, the micing and Young’s performance, while often poignant with his guard down, can be difficult to understand.

Is this an album every Neil Young fan needs? No. If you own Before and After, and are considering Coastal, you are a Neil Young completist. Seriously, save your money. This album, while it has some very interesting and revealing performances, is not essential to your collection; stream the songs a few times and that itch will go away.

Talking to the Trees

Talkin to the Trees is Young’s second album release of 2025. Young is backed by The Chrome Hearts. Young wrote all the songs; and Young produced with Lou Adler. These are new songs, yet a couple of them sound oddly familiar.

The songs:

1. “Family Life” – 2:50 A family confessional, a good and bad result. Generic country music.
2. “Dark Mirage” – 5:39 A heavy, bluesy number. Not a classic, but a nice mid-tempo rocker.
3. “First Fire of Winter” – 4:43 Sounds a bit like too much like “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”, otherwise a fine, slow, poignant sound.
4. “Silver Eagle” – 3:17 Sounds like Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land”, a love song to his travel trailer.
5. “Let’s Roll Again” – 3:29 Back to a grungy, country song where he sings about wanting American industry to build needed and useful products that won’t kill us.
6. “Big Change” – 2:53 Nice guitar work, but repetitive lyrics.
7. “Talkin to the Trees” – 3:52 A nice acoustic flavored song. More of this please.
8. “Movin Ahead” – 3:18 Loud, industrial sounding rocker.
9. “Bottle of Love” – 4:06 Another sweet, ballad, a beautiful song. The best song on the album.
10. “Thankful” – 3:45 A great close to the album. Positive and lovely.

The band:

Neil Young – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano, vibraphone, production
Anthony LoGerfo – drums
Corey McCormick – bass, background vocals
Micah Nelson – guitar, background vocals
Spooner Oldham – keyboards, organ

LoGerfo and McCormick are part of Lucas Nelson and the Promise of the Real. Micah Nelson is one of Willie Nelson’s other sons and has his own band. Oldham has played with Young, off and on, going back to 1978. Oldham was a member of the famed Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, playing on many classic albums and hit singles.

Lou Alder was a fine producer back in the 1960s and early 1970s. He produced such artists as Carole King and the Mamas and the Papas. Young has worked with Adler on several other albums recently.

Young can be beautiful and heartfelt, and grungy and preachy. “Bottle of Love” is quite nice, with more than a passing nod to Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys. Young even plays a vibraphone, ala Pet Sounds, and not since playing the instrument on his own “Will to Love” of 50 years past. “Thankful” is another soft and reflective tune, a song that would have fit onto Comes a Time.

Easily my favorites are the easy going, reflective songs like “Talking to the Trees”, “Bottle of Love”, “Thankful” and “First Fire of Winter.” An album of acoustic-based songs of this caliber is great any time. Of his heavier songs here, the standout is “Dark Mirage.” The other grungy tunes are generic and preachy, not because I disagree, but because they aren’t very good. Sorry, Neil.

6/10 for the six really good songs.