Neil Young: Are you passionate

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * )

He's always had a way with history, whether it was songs such as Ohio, Powderfinger, Cortez the Killer or Pocahontas. Even his early-90s Arc-Weld live set became a kind of soundtrack to the Gulf War.

But now with his umpteenth album Young has penned a song called Let's Roll, in tribute to those September 11 passengers on Flight 93 who are thought to have overpowered their hijackers causing the plane to crash into an unpopulated area.

It must be said, the song is really awful. And not just because a supposed 60s peacenik - one who memorably sang John Lennon's Imagine in the musical tribute immediately after the terrorist attacks - seems to be coming on all gung-ho.

It's that the song is so lyrically underwhelming ("We're going after Satan/ On the Wings of a Dove") and musically, right from the cellphone sound effects at the beginning to the strutting, swampy guitar, it's a plain bad fit.

And, frankly, the rest of Are You Passionate isn't much better. Backed mainly by Crazy Horse compadre Frank "Poncho" Sampedro, Booker T and the MGs organist Booker T. Jones and bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn, Young's 11 tracks try to be a soul-rock set.

Unfortunately, those Stax label veterans offer too many variations on their Time is Tight as backing, and Young's famously shaky quiver of a voice is not up to the sensitive soul-shaped songs, so it soon becomes an album of only incidental pleasures.

For fans of Young the warhorse rocker, that means really only Goin' Home. With its allusions to Custer, its tom-tom drums and trademark Crazy Horse backing, it arrives as something of a comfort - right until you realise it's yet another Young rewrite of Like a Hurricane.

By the sound of this, the next Young revival is some way off.

Label: Reprise