neil young and the chrome hearts Share New Song "big change"

As if I couldn’t love Neil Young more, he and his band, the Chrome Hearts, have changed their name to all lowercase. It’s neil young and the chrome hearts now, and their new single, ironically, calls for something massive. “big change” is loud, sludgy, thrashing and lyrically minimal. Young repeats the refrain “big change is coming” until he and guitarist Micah Nelson quake into a brief solo. The band, made up of Young, Nelson, Corey McCormick, Anthony Logerfo and Spooner Oldham, sound primal and totally in-step with each other.

It should be no surprise, either, that “big change” arrives just days before Donald Trump is set to be inaugurated as president. During the song, the chrome hearts insist that it’s time for the American people to reap what they’ve sown. “Might be a politician tryin’ to say something new,” Young cries out. “Might be your decision, now you got to see it through. Might be bad and it might be good, big change is comin’ to you.”

Young co-produced the track with Lou Adler, and it’s the first taste of what is to, eventually, be a full-length album from the chrome hearts later this year. The band reportedly recorded it at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La and, according to John Hanlon, it’s going “to be real different” and some “in your face loud irreverent rock ‘n roll paint splatter on the canvas in the vein of a Jackson Pollock painting.”

Listen to “big change” below.

neil young and the chrome hearts Share New Song “big change”