1. Beautiful Bluebird
2. Boxcar
3. Ordinary People
4. Shining Light
5. The Believer
6. Spirit Road
7. Dirty Old Man
8. Ever After
9. No Hidden Path
10. The Way

Total time: 1:06:13

There's one thing no one can accuse Young of: doing the same old thing over and over.

He may return every so often to one of his many musical personas (as on 2005's "Prairie Wind," when he revisited his acoustic "Harvest"/"Harvest Moon" mode; or the follow-up electric "Living With War"), but the guy deserves credit for constantly mixing it up.

Here he throws a little of everything onto one album and, despite its hodgepodge nature, it gels. The title refers to the storied unreleased LP of 1976, many songs of which surfaced later on other albums. "Chrome Dreams II," conversely, contains three unreleased '80s tunes: "Beautiful Bluebird" (circa "Old Ways"), and "Boxcar" and "Ordinary People" (circa "This Note's for You"). The latter is from the TNFY sessions; the first two are newly recorded.

The rest of the songs are recently written and recorded mostly live in the studio. Among the highlights are "Shining Light," featuring blues chord progressions in the vein of "Speaking Out" from 1975's "Tonight's the Night" and just a hint of the surf guitar more fully employed on the two Crazy Horse-style rockers, "Spirit Road" and "No Hidden Path." "Ever After," a Nashville-sounding country whiner, features the exquisite pedal steel guitar of Ben Keith, who joins other longtime Young cohorts Rick Rosas and Ralph Molina to form the album's backup band.

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nov 2007 reviews