Concert review: Neil Young drops career-spanning set at Burnaby's Deer Lake Park

Article content

Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page.

Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts strode onto the stage at Deer Lake Park to little fanfare to open the first of two dates on the Love Earth tour. But that is pretty typical for Young, who has never been a lasers-and-explosions kind of fella.

Taking up his acoustic and trusty G key harmonica, the legendary folk rocker rolled right back to his fifth album, On the Beach, to strum out Ambulance Blues. In it, he sings the lyric “It’s hard to say the meaning of this song” — and it was. But the 1974 tune was a good way to get the very chatty crowd to turn its attention to the stage.

Switching up to his Les Paul to scrape out the first of many guitar licks to spike into the overcast night sky, Young and his new backing band stumbled into the distinctively sloppy groove of the classic Cowgirl in the Sand. Young showed some of his 79 years on this one, with the high notes barely rasped and the group harmonies even more raspy. But the guitar interplay between him and guitarist Micah Nelson was spot-on psychedelic ’60s and just the right length for a jam.

Be the Rain, a track originally recorded with his long-lived backing crew Crazy Horse, didn’t fare nearly as well. The first in a trio of tunes to include a megaphone vocal, the song from 2003’s rock opera Greendale seems more appropriately placed in an episode of the Simpsons with its reference to three-eyed fish than as an environmental-protest track.

When he does pen a proper protest tune, Young is one of the best in the business. Which made the sabre-rattling rage of Southern Man and the Kent State massacre rager Ohio knockouts. He rounded out these early career classics with the song Long Walk Home, which fared far less well as Young’s voice again couldn’t match the arrangement.

A stellar version of Powderfinger followed and he nailed it with all the force of the version on his classic Rust Never Sleeps. If ever there was a song in his canon that needs a film made about it, it’s this one. The story related in the piece is a perfect slice of settler conflict told at high volume. Awesome.

The line about “cleaning out the White House” in the new tune Big Crime got roars from the audience. Based on the number of U.S. licence plates parked all around local streets, many had driven up from the U.S. to catch the show. I only saw one MAGA hat — maybe ironic?

Young has always paired his angry rocker side with his folk and country yearnings. This side to the artist has provided some of the most enduring music of his entire career and he had couples in the crowd up and waltzing to the tender acoustic versions of Only Love Can Break Your Heart and a touching Harvest Moon, where the actual moon almost made an appearance over the lake behind the stage. It’s easy to understand why these two tracks are wedding first-dance favourites and they just radiate an honesty rarely found in the often drippy love-song arena.

While he keeps his interaction with the audience to little more than regularly checking in to see if everyone is doing all right and to say thanks for coming to the concert, Young did recount a story about a guy named Randy, who lives “around here” who somehow tracked down the guitar that Young played in his first band the Squires, back in the early 1960s in Winnipeg.

“I pawned it because I was going to become a folk singer,” he joked, before strapping it on to bash out a killer version of the Buffalo Springfield song Mr. Soul. With its purposeful flip on the Rolling Stones Satisfaction riff, the single from 1967 still grooves with a vengeance and the band clearly loves playing it.

Sun Green, one of the best songs from Greendale, followed with the catchy-but-boneheaded Hey, Hey, My My (Into the Black) to finish the noisy portions of the show before the acoustic guitar and harmonica came back out for the final few numbers.

Old Man sounds very different coming from an old man. If anything, gaining gravitas in its analytical world view, the song is even more impactful today. To finish the evening, Young pulled out a real deep cut.

Roll Another Number (for the Road) from Tonight’s the Night is easily the best trucker country track to come from a rock singer since Little Feat’s Willin’. It was also a perfect way to send everyone off into the night.

Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts are back at Deer Lake Park again on Monday night. Tickets at ticketmaster.ca.

Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts Love Earth set list

sderdeyn@postmedia.com

Love concerts, but can't make it to the venue? Stream live shows and events from your couch with VEEPS, a music-first streaming service now operating in Canada. Click here for an introductory offer of 30% off. Explore upcoming concerts and the extensive archive of past performances.