Neil Young plays favorites and protesting songs on Hollywood Bowl: Review

Before Jesse Welles was Jesse Welles, Neil Young Was Jesse Welles. Which is to say, the reigning paragon of protest music. He reminded his audience about that Monday night at Hollywood Bowl With a four-song sequence of powerfully furious songs about America that could not possibly have been programmed in his set in that order by mistake. “Southern Man”, in the early 1970s width against institutionalized racism, was followed by “Ohio”, a classic heart fight that cemented for all times how the government can be reversed against its people. These two songs together were galvanizing enough, but Young quickly noted that he was not just about resistance-nostalgia, after those with “big crime”, a brand new anti-trump melody and “long walk home”, a “90s asking USA’s idealism, where he has now replaced” Beirut “I in” in “in the text.

In some ways, the show would have ended satisfactorily right there, with Young who connects then and now in his ongoing concern about how the American dream could get angry. But it is good that it did not, because this suite took place with more than half of the concert still to go. And also because Young had something to offer in addition to conscience and timeliness:

Hits.

Now it can obviously for almost any other classic rocker from Boomer-era that makes the circle. Not necessarily for Neil, which can be as mercury in the creation of set lists as he is in other stores. But this current tour, his first with a new support band, The Chrome Hearts, makes a pretty ideal Neil Young Show, so everyone leaves satisfied, whether you come for the neo-grunge or the acoustic things, and if you hope to hear deep cuts or a solid selection of the things that have been bent in the whole of the Stengeneral.

He does not play exactly the same classic or relative ambiguities every night, so your audience’s Milage can vary on the information, if not the conditions. But on this special balmy la night: The Liling “Harvest Moon”, “” Only Love Can Break Your Heart “and” Old Man “? Check. Opening number released from “On The Beach” (“Ambulance Blues”), plus two from the environmental concept album “Greendale”?

Perfection, which well -balanced a set list … at least on paper. And fortunately in execution, although “perfect” seems to be a herethern term to use in conjunction with any Neil Young Show, where it is intended to be characterized by broken glory not only around the edges but in the center of performance.

Making his LA debut, The Chrome Hearts, Young’s “new” backing band, is mainly most of a group that supported him for several years, promise of the real – guitarist Micah Nelson, bassist Corey McCormick and Drummer Anthony Luckerfo – With the addition of a famous veteran organist, spoons spoons, spoons spoons, spoons spoons Toton. The sound is a little saving and less busy, without Lukas in the mix (Micah made a shy citizen solo, but remains otherwise off Young’s road), and with Oldham’s extra keyboard parts almost subliminal for the main part of the set.

This ensemble threads needle nicely between Young’s electrical and acoustic poles – and he has been a man with extremes, in these respects, who really no one else in his league, which leads to many years shows where gigs could be counted to drive one way or another. There was obviously a primary beauty for the raw horse’s raw power, which is finally discontinued after a tour 2024 which was greeted with mixed reactions and was interrupted three months before its planned end. But the band leader’s return to a crew that can so much get Twain to meet between his two pages makes a show that satisfies fans that likes that their neil compliantism is represented in a single concert.

You can almost be forgiven for mistaken Chrome’s hearts for the last day’s crazy horse at a distance-only for Corey McCormick’s Wiry, Jump-Up-and-Down Energy so similar to the stage’s presence that Nils Lofgren had in the last band’s last run. In any case, the configuration during the Jammier moments remains consistent: Young and his colleague guitarist and bassist form a circle where they play to each other, and not so much the audience, even if they do nothing as unpleasant as making actual eye contact with each other. This Perma Stance is not unfriendly to the audience; It sends only an eternally refreshing signal that these guys may do this together even though there were no 18,000 witnesses.

Young has really done more jam-oriented shows in his career than this tour offers, but everyone who came in hopes of hearing them kicked out had itching immediately, since the soft opening of “Ambulance Blues” was immediately followed by an 11-minute version of “Cowgirl in the sand.” You don’t have to wait to get the right to Yin and Yangen. I heard a complaint that the star was doing too many new things, which made me wonder if people are considering “Greendale” “new.” In fact, the tour only highlights a song from the new “Talkin (sic) to The Trees” album “Silver Wheels” – an Ode to tour buses and their driver – and then a song that is even newer than that, the Trump melody, “Big Crime.”

If there was an ongoing theme during the evening, besides these protest songs, it was moon – “Moon on the Rise” I “Sail Away” directly established “Harvest Moon” – and other natural forces. You can make a drinking game of how many songs in the set mentioned either the earth, Mother Nature or both, but this would be a game that would certainly make you eject from the Hollywood Bowl long before Encore was close.

This was a show where the special effects came in the form of Komos of two very eclectic keyboards. A modest but powerful pipe organ on the back of the stage was used by Young on a number, “does so in the name of love” (one of the aforementioned lesser-known CSNY directory songs). At the same time, a synthesizer with angel wings came down from the ceiling beam for Micah Nelson to play on “Like a Hurricane”, and hilarious swing in the wind that kept the locks of long hair that looked out from under Young’s leader’s hat that blew in the wind.

Another aural FX moment arrived when Young sang into a special microphone filtered into a megaphone under the verses of the two “greendale” numbers, “Be the Rain” and “Sun Green.” (This literally jerking megaphone got its own close -up on the big screens; you take the production design boom in a neil young show where you get them.)

In some ways it will not only participate in a young gig – it is to register, at least for one night, for a whole belief system: the religion of stubborn conscience. If there really was something like a sliding spectrum for these types of things, Neil Young would still surely count as the least compromised person in Rock ‘n’ roll. He did not perform his classic “This Note’s for You” on Bowl Monday night, as he has a couple of other times on the current tour. But he has been stuck in his weapons without commercial distances for decades, and the only banners on the grounds of the bowl were at the peak of social activism booths, not for companies’ sponsors. The tone was determined by his choice of opening act, a group that does nothing but Anti-Materialism Message Music: Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir. We did not look at the concession sites ourselves, but it has been reported that young people have taken in local food and beer for the night.

These are the types of things that can invite mockery that “wake up” if even Maga supporters did not have any feeling that Neil Young is not a snowflake. He has a way to always seem like he can go either completely or completely sweet at us, without ever landing clearly in any fixed attitude. But without patronizing their audience with anything other than any “happy to see you” -types greetings, Young can still promote a sense of society just by combining a crowd in admiration of its robust individualism -and with a little peace and love spray that seems deeply known, not platitinal.

About all this culminated in a transcendent moment, it was in an extended version of “Like a Hurricane” who had young, in his eternal Choirboy voice and sang a single phrase over and over as a desperate mantra: “Somewhere safer where the feeling stops.” Listen to the bitter -sweet words that were repeated for a minute had a way to convey what Young represents to its audience, 50 and 60 years later: a safe space where rock ‘n’ roll will never die, but, even more importantly, nor the love and passion that its supporters collectively put it in.

Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts Setlist, Hollywood Bowl, September 15, 2025:

Ambulance blues
Cowgirl in the sand
Be the rain
Southern man
Ohio
Big crime
Long walk home
Silver eagle
Sail away
Harvesting
Looking forward
Only love can break your heart
Sun green
Hello Hi, my mine (in black)
Like a hurricane
The name of love
Old man
Roll another number (for the road)