On 2025’s Talkin to the Trees, his first album with his latest band, the Chrome Hearts, Neil Young did what he’s always done: moved from one place to another at his heart’s content, taking several detours over the album’s 38-minute running time — from acoustic country folk to blaring Crazy Horse-style bar rock. For the now 80-year-old singer-songwriter, it was both a look to the future and a nod to his past.
Second Song, their second album and his 44th overall, not counting the studio releases in his popular Neil Young Archives series, follows a mostly familiar path with some slight departures along the way, including a pair of songs Young wrote in the ’60s. While Talkin to the Trees included songs about Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the environment, Second Song is mostly about personal reflection and the passage of time.
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Though Young isn’t exactly heading into the light quietly. “The president was on TV and says everything is golden / But he’s tearing down the old White House,” he sings in the trudging, nine-plus-minute “Soon I Might Be Going.” And the environment, long a priority commitment for Young, appears as a supporting character in a few of the album’s seven songs.
But mostly Young looks back in Second Song, taking stock of his life (“I thought about the early days, when I was young“) and waxing poetic to his main love, actress Daryl Hannah, whom he’s been married to since 2018. “You are the light of my life / Like a river that flows right through my heart,” he sings in “Earth Girl,” one of the most unabashedly romantic songs of his long career; he repeats the sentiment in the album closer “I’ll Love You Forever,” first recorded with the Squires in 1964 and included on 2009’s The Archives Vol. 1 1963–1972 but recast here as a four-minute valentine to Hannah.
Watch the Official Lyric Video for Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts’ ‘Second Song’
The Chrome Hearts (drummer Anthony LeGerfo, bassist Corey McCormick, guitarist Micah Nelson and keyboardist Spooner Oldham) follow Young through his various turns on Second Song, expertly supporting whether the moment calls for distanced introspection (“The Foggy Edge of Time”), hushed deliberation (the 11-and-a-half-minute title track) or Harvest-style country rock (“Casting Me Away From You,” first tried out in 1965). It’s all familiar to everyone who has followed Young’s career for the past six decades. Even without surprises (and really, when is the last time a Neil Young album surprised anyone?), Second Song is as dependable as the changing seasons he sings about in “Day After Day.”
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Gallery Credit: Michael Gallucci
