The Canadian singer-songwriter reinterprets his repertoire with Chrome Hearts in an album that avoids celebratory rhetoric
There are artists who, once they reach a certain age, end up interpreting themselves. Neil Young, however, continues to do what he has always done: question his past. This is the profound meaning of As Time Explodesthe new live album recorded with Chrome Hearts during Love Earth Tour 2025a work that spans over half a century of music without ever taking on the contours of nostalgic celebration.
Almost sixty years after the move from his native Canada to California that would change the history of his career, Young once again demonstrates that he considers thethe repertoire not as an archive to be preserved but as a living material to be reinvented. The title of the album itself suggests this vision: time explodes, shatters, loses its linearity. Thus songs born in different eras end up coexisting in the same present.
Registered between Europe, UK, USA and Canada, As Time Explodes it also represents the consecration of Chrome Hearts, the band that accompanies Young in this phase of his career. Alongside the veteran Spooner Oldham on keyboards we find Micah Nelson, Corey McCormick and Anthony LoGerfo, musicians who have been able to build a sound dimension around the Canadian capable of evoking the spirit of Crazy Horse without simply imitating it.
The album spans a good part of his artistic history. From “Ohio” to “After the Gold Rush”, from “Harvest Moon” to “Like a Hurricane”, up to more recent episodes such as “Silver Eagle” and Big Crime”, the live performance builds a path that connects different generations of listeners.
But what is striking is not so much the choice of repertoire but the way in which it is approached. Young continues to escape the temptation of perfection. His guitar remains rough, unpredictable, often deliberately imperfect. It is a poetics that has always accompanied him and which today appears almost revolutionary in a musical panorama dominated by the search for impeccable performance.
Listening gives the sensation of witnessing something happening at the very moment it is played. “Harvest Moon” acquires a deeper melancholy than the original version. “Ohio” retains a surprisingly current strength. “Cortez the Killer”, expanded in its long electric trajectories, confirms why it is considered one of the great compositions in the history of rock. And “Like a Hurricane” continues to be a demonstration of how Young still manages to transform feedback and distortion into expressive tools today.ssive.
The value of As Time Explodes However, it does not only lie in the quality of the performances. The album tells something more important: Neil Young’s relationship with time. In an era in which much of classic rock thrives on reunions, anniversaries and nostalgic operations, the Canadian musician continues to look forward.
This is why it would be wrong to consider As Time Explodes just another stage in his endless live discography. It perhaps does not possess the historical weight of Live Rust nor the devastating electrical power of Weld, but photographs something equally precious: an artist who at eighty years old, continues to refuse the role of rock monument.
Neil Young doesn’t seem interested in preserving his legend. He prefers to continue questioning her. And precisely for this reason, after more than six decades of career, he remains one of the most authentic and necessary voices of contemporary music.
