Neil Young & Promise Of The Real Earth

Neil Young used his union with the Promise of the Real -- the gangly crew fronted by Willie Nelson's kids Lukas and Micah -- to tackle weighty social problems on The Monsanto Years, a record supported by a relatively expansive tour. Earth, a double album culled from 2015 performances, goes one further, mining ecologically minded Young tunes and then addressing them to mother earth herself. According to Young, the catch is, "our animal kingdom is well represented in the audience as well, and the animals, insects, birds, and mammals actually take over the performances of the songs at times." This is an understatement. Animal sounds infect Earth, sometimes swallowing the guitars, sometimes chirping along in rhythm, an affect that is precisely the opposite of natural. Earth is aggressively artificial, the nature noises grafted upon performances that are indifferent to their presence. Perhaps this tension could be construed as a commentary -- man plows through the world without care for his