Neil Young with Crazy Horse, “World Record.”

Neil Young isn’t looking to set any world records on his new album. Instead, this new collection of songs feels like a cross between a time capsule—or world record—of how we got ourselves into this big climate change mess, and a set of guidance about finding a way back.

Young is no stranger to using his music to send a message. His antiracism activities and songs earned him a criticism by name in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” and he’s been going strong ever since, criticizing the policies of George H. W. Bush with “Rockin’ in the Free World” in 1989 and his son George W. Bush with his 2006 album Living With War. An album on environmentalism has seemed inevitable since his home burned down in the 2018 California wildfires, and he personally blamed Donald Trump’s climate policies.

Like that anti-war protest album from a decade and a half ago, this latest protest album is a mix of loose, rambling folk rock and Americana arrangements and richer, feedback-squelched guitar-led sonic tapestries played by longtime band Crazy Horse. World Record was produced by Young and Rick Rubin.

The follow-up to 2021’s BARN, like Young’s previous protest efforts, is full of advice from the first line: “Love Earth/ And your love comes back to you,” he sings on “Love Earth.” The song plays like a bullet-point list of pros of why we shouldn’t destroy the only place people can live, a place for the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea and for the children. Without the deep overtones that we’re actually not loving our planet, the song plays like a mellow feel-good tune highlighted by Nils Lofgren’s breezy lap steel guitar and Young’s twinkling piano highlights.

“Love Earth” is one of the happier-sounding songs on World Record. It’s followed by the higher-tempo “Overhead,” a bar-room sort of song like something Paul McCartney may have made with Wings. Drummer Ralph Molina takes the lead in this one, with Neil Young playing a bluesy piano harmony and harmonica around it.

The same goes for “This Old Planet (changing days),” which presents hope for better days. But as he looks back on his own childhood, with a big blue sky and a sparkling river that flowed through his town on the way to some lake, he looks ahead and tells listeners that it’s our job now to protect what we can while there’s still time: “You’re not alone on this old planet/ It’s still all yours to do as you may,” he adds. What sounds like a harmonica is actually Nils Lofgren playing an accordion, which adds the spark in an otherwise bittersweet-sounding song.

“The Long Day Before” seems to be speaking on the importance of journalism and the destructiveness of fake news. But the descriptions of what this journalist thinks of as real and important just blends into conspiracy theories and fear—which very well may be the point.

“In the old days and the newer days and the present days, the future days/ Tomorrow will never be late if your dreams can come true,” he sings. “On the TV in the newscast they’re never gonna talk about/ On the front page of the internet, you’re never gonna see about/ The big thing in the room that’s happening right now.”

The louder, rock-ier songs include the down-tempo, messy “I Walk With You (earth ringtone),” on which Young looks back on what he’s experienced in life and where the world is heading next, possibly without him. “I look out at the change and I wonder how the earth could be going to somewhere I’ve never seen,” he sings. “Fight with me now to the end of the wars and believe what they’ve done for you—if you now are free…/ The end of wars, the price of life, the cost of care, the toll of strife/ I walk with you and count the days.”

On an album of easily digestible three-minute songs comes 15-minute epic centerpiece “Chevrolet.” It at first sounds like the sort of ’60s love song to a favorite car. But it’s actually about Young’s changing attitude to his love for cars. Chevy won’t use this for any truck commercials, let’s say. It’s a complicated song about how what he once viewed as freeing—living on the open road—has actually been part of the problem the whole time.

Over squelching, reverb-laden guitars, he realizes he can’t go back.

“What a curve …/ We took it fast before we took it slow,” Young sings. “Oh but it feels so good/ Rollin’ the window down/ Ivory wheel in my hands again/ That’s the road we can’t go back on/ That’s the BAD turn we’ve already made.”

“The World (is in trouble now)” and “Break The Chain,” which come midway through the album, mix the Americana-inflected side of the album with the harder-edged side. As Young sings of clinging on to what he holds dear on the former (“Because the earth has held me so, I never will let go”), Billy Talbot holds the rhythm section down with deep bass notes, over which Young spews discordant harmonica and pump organ squeaks, and Lofgren makes sense of it all with targeted guitar bursts.

And on the latter, bluesy song, the album’s biggest highlight, Young speaks most affirmatively about his intentions over Lofgren’s Southern slides up and down his guitar using a bottleneck:

“I’m gonna love every breath that I take/ … Down to my soul that my heartbeat makes/ … Walk as straight as my eyes can see/ … I’m gonna stay home in eternity.” It’s the loudest and most rambunctious song on World Record, and it shows that the fire still burns in the elder rocker’s heart.

Neil Young is also resolute to save the planet on “Walkin’ On The Road (to the future),” a plea for a better tomorrow with “no more war, only love.” Singing softly as he does, he acknowledges the work needed may be scary, but that we should rise up without delay and turn the mistakes of the past into the best possible outcome while there’s time to do so.

“These are the things we’ve done and they have a cost, but we will take it on,” he sings. “One step right in front of the other, walkin’ to the future as sisters and brothers/ We got to do it now though some may say it’s too late.”

And on stomping “The Wonder Won’t Wait,” Young sings from the perspective of the aggrieved Earth to “take some time to live before you die.”

Neil Young has described the new album—the first of two he has planned in the near future—as “new songs of our time.” Fittingly, a sense of unease permeates the record in addition to the hope. Young tries in various ways to communicate the urgency of his message. As an art, it’s an effective listen. As a message, let’s hope one of these reaches the right people.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.