Neil Young - Chrome Dreams (2LP)

Chrome Dreams has lived in the imagination of Neil Young fans for decades, a half-whispered 70s ghost that shaped how people heard the albums that did come out. When it finally arrived in August 2023 as an official release, it felt less like a vault clear-out and more like a missing page slotted back into the book. The surprise is how natural it plays as an album. Not a playlist of curios, but a coherent slice of mid 70s Young, switching between tenderness, grit and that sideways humour he slips in when you least expect it.

Plenty here will be familiar, just in the right place and light. Like a Hurricane roars in with Crazy Horse at full gale, Frank Sampedro’s guitar chopping at the squall while Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina hold their ground. It’s the same performance fans have known since American Stars ’n Bars, but sitting next to the intimate stuff it somehow hits harder. Then Will to Love does the opposite trick, all crackle and murmur. Young recorded it alone by the fireplace in 1976, and you can hear the logs as clearly as the falsetto. It’s a weird, beautiful piece of domestic psychedelia and the heart of the set.

There are early versions that change how you hear the later cuts. Sedan Delivery lopes rather than sprints, a laconic rocker that makes the barbs sound sly instead of frantic. Powderfinger shows up as an acoustic ballad, the story still devastating without the electric roar. Too Far Gone arrives as a fragile 1976 take, with mandolin shading its melancholy years before the Freedom remake. Hold Back the Tears is another eye-opener. The original lyric leans more personal and the feel is lighter, so when you get to Comes a Time later it sounds like a rewrite for the radio that never quite erased the bruise.

Star of Bethlehem remains a balm. Emmylou Harris threads her harmony through the tune like it was written for her, which, in a way, it was. Then there’s Stringman, captured live in 1976, a gentle showstopper that Young would revive decades later on Unplugged. Hearing it here, in this context, it sounds like a note to himself about endurance. Homegrown rolls in warm and dusty, a reminder of the aborted album of the same name that finally surfaced in 2020 and deepened the picture of this era. Look Out for My Love ties the whole set together, a love song with Crazy Horse’s quiet weight tucked under it.

The legend around Chrome Dreams has always been about what might have been in 1977. Now you can hear why the myth stuck. It isn’t that this sequence would have fixed Neil Young’s famously zigzag path. It’s that the path makes sense when you place these songs side by side. You can feel him testing the edges of country, folk and garage rock without fuss. The sequencing is canny too. Big, slow, fast, solitary, communal, it breathes like a gig.

Sonically the release is a treat. These are master tapes, not bootlegs, with mix choices that favour wood, wire and air. Acoustic guitars bloom, Molina’s snare has that dry Young-ian thwack, and the room around the piano on Stringman gives you a sense of the crowd leaning in. If you’re the type who still flips records, Chrome Dreams vinyl is the way to live with it. The ebb and flow across sides suits the material, and it sits nicely alongside other Neil Young albums on vinyl from the 70s. I’ve already spotted copies tucked into the staff picks at a Melbourne record store, and it’s the sort of title people hunting Neil Young vinyl will keep asking after. If you buy Neil Young records online, put this high on the list, and if you’re scouring shops that specialise in vinyl records Australia wide, don’t sleep on it.

Critics greeted the release with the kind of nod usually reserved for long-rumoured films finally restored, and fans have mostly exhaled in relief. Not because it outshines Rust Never Sleeps or Comes a Time, but because it illuminates them. You hear how ideas travelled, morphed and resurfaced across the decade. You hear an artist comfortable changing his mind and still chasing the song. That might be the real chrome dream here, the shine you get from miles and miles of use rather than showroom polish.