(Credits: Neil Young)
Have you ever had the desperate urge to travel on a long, boring car ride with Neil Young? When you think of the looming musical legend, is that the dream that comes to mind first? A passionate desire to have some pointless chit-chat down the highway? Well, you’re in luck—because Coastal delivers that and not much more.
Make no mistake about it, Neil Young is a fascinating figure. He’s perhaps one of the most complex we have, given that seemingly no media training can touch him. In recent months alone, he leaked the news of his Glastonbury headline slot by publicly pulling out – bashing the festival over a years-old complaint about the BBC streaming it – then needed to sheepishly back down, apologise, and share an excited statement about how he will actually be performing when he realised his information was incorrect. If you’ve never looked at the Neil Young Archives site, please do. While other artists of his prestige might have websites with lyrics, maybe some context around the songs, plus the usual tour dates and merch, Young has a whole newspaper where he seemingly publishes whatever he wants.
Titled the ‘NYA Times Contrarian’, he is exactly that. He publishes pieces slamming world figures, particularly rallying against Donald Trump. He talks about global goings-on and issues facing the music world and rants about all kinds of topics, from the random to the political. The fact is that Young is an incredibly dynamic and interesting figure, even if you don’t touch his past as one of the key figures of the 1970s folk crowd. He was fascinating then, and he’s fascinating now. So why is Coastal so dull?
Obviously, the aim here was to make something intimate. The film is made by Daryl Hannah, his wife, so there are some heartwarming moments, particularly of Young talking to the person behind the lens. But, honestly, it feels amateurish. In moments where more could have been done, it stays so small, such as the long performances that are almost predominantly straight, unmoving shots with occasionally a few illustrations and effects layered over the top. Sure, it’s in black and white, but the whole thing lacks a cinematic edge and feels more like a glorified vlog than a movie warranting its hour and 45-minute run time.
Because, in that time, Young says very little. This film captures his first performances in several years as he returned to the stage following the Covid-19 pandemic. But does he really talk about that, or about his relationship to performance and the life he’s spent on stage? No. Does he share much about the new music he’s predominantly playing at this time? No. Instead, this is a long stretch of relative silence in his van as he stares out the window and taps his fingers or clips of brief banter, either with his crew, wife or audience. The most insight, or the closest viewers get to the outspoken man we know he is, is tiny slithers of on-stage chat where he says stuff like “I’m so happy I was here before AI was here.”
Maybe it needed some talking heads. Clearly endeavouring to do something different or lean into that intimate approach, the result is too small scale to be satisfying. It’s hollow as, at one point, the camera just happens to go past Joni Mitchell or other behind-the-scenes cameo like a flickering tease of some good content left unexplored. It feels lazy as if Hannah wanted to make a documentary without actually making a music documentary, instead of just gathering up a good enough number of clips, packaging them together, and relying on people’s intrigue in Young to make it work.
But is this enough even for Young fans? Is it anyone’s dream to sit with him on a quiet journey and go no deeper than “traffic talk with Neil Young?” This phrase feels so wrong to type, given how lucky we are to still have these legends around, but I’ll say it—this project feels pointless. With one of the most interesting subjects in modern music at hand, Coastal is a waste of its own subject.
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