Neil Young

A great expert in unearthing and displaying his own buried treasures, Neil Young has always had a pretty unique relationship with recordings of his own music. The Loner records sessions by the shovelful, and sometimes decides to shove the result in the basement, sometimes to publish it. It depends, and his choices can be puzzling. His XXL discography looks like a rollercoaster, with incredible summits, but also some steep declines... This Hitchhiker who appeared in Summer 2017 in fact brought together songs from an acoustic session on 11 August 1976 and which figure, by and large, on the albums he brought out in the five years previous: Pocahontas (on Rust Never Sleeps in 1979, including some overdubs), Powderfinger (also on Rust Never Sleeps, recorded live with Crazy Horse), Captain Kennedy (on Hawks & Doves in 1980), Ride My Llama (again, on Rust Never Sleeps, a solo live performance), Hitchhiker (on Le Noise en 2010, on electric guitar), Campaigner (on Decade in 1977, missing a verse), Human Highway (on Comes A Time in 1978, recorded as a group) and The Old Country Waltz (on American Stars 'n Bars in 1977, with Crazy Horse). There are also two completely new numbers: Hawaii and Give Me Strength… If all that sounds a little warmed-over or for fans only, the beauty of the versions offered up on this striking compilation renders the result unmissable. These compositions are of the highest calibre. But the performances are truly inspired. A pure marvel. © MZ/Qobuz

Tonight’s The Night is one of the greatest dark albums in the history of rock’n’roll. Within six month, Neil Young lost two close friends to overdoses: his guitarist Danny Whitten and his roadie Bruce Berry. It explains why the album he recorded soon after, in August and September 1973 (which was only released in June 1975, after On The Beach), was so dark… The introspective trip of Tonight’s The Night feeds on these personal tragedies and blends them with the oppressive atmosphere that reigned in the US at the time. Urban violence, rampant drug use, Vietnam War and faltering hippie utopia all contributed to his sombre yet sublime and poignant partition. Even the instrumentation of Tonight’s The Night is wavering between a flickering piano and a thrifty pedal steel guitar. A stripped-bare style to better highlight the beauty of the melodies on moving ballads like Tired Eyes, New Mama and Borrowed Tune… On September 20th, 21st and 22nd of 1973, Neil Young and his musicians, baptised the Santa Monica Flyers (with Ben Keith on the pedal steel guitar, Nils Lofgren on the guitar and piano, Billy Talbot on the bass and Ralph Molina on drums), stepped onto the stage of Roxy, a brand-new club in West Hollywood, Los Angeles. In their hands, this new repertoire that stunk of death and sulphur, but the versions they delivered to the Californian public were bursting with true emotional power, real warmth and, at times, a sincere and communicative joy that was – logically – absent from the studio versions. That’s the true magic of this unearthed and restored archive. And while Neil Young’s fans will no doubt have this Roxy − Tonight’s The Night Live on repeat, newcomers can also jump on this stunning bandwagon and discover the universe of a unique musician who was, at the time, on top of his game and writing. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

Neil Young's "lost album," Homegrown, gets its debut 41 years late. Young shelved it because he "just couldn't listen to" the heartache, which followed the collapse of his romance with actress Carrie Snodgress. Meant to fall between Harvest and Comes a Time, the 1974 time capsule fits neatly in that space. "Separate Ways" and "Try," both featuring drums by Levon Helm, truly feel like an extension of Harvest: the former a noir-country lament and the latter an ambling plea for love lifted aloft by Emmylou Harris' backing vocals. Throughout, train-whistle harmonica is a Greek chorus, popping up on the gorgeous and hopeless "Star of Bethlehem" ("All your dreams and your lovers won't protect you") and stripped-bare "Love Is a Rose"—which would be made famous in '75 by Linda Ronstadt and here ends with urgent guitar chords like exclamation points of warning. There are moments of indulgence—you're safe to skip any title that's the name of a place—but also songs that stand with his best. The blistering "Vacancy" ("You poison me with that long, vacant stare") and high-lonesome "White Line," with Robbie Roberston, aren't to be missed. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

A great expert in unearthing and displaying his own buried treasures, Neil Young has always had a pretty unique relationship with recordings of his own music. The Loner records sessions by the shovelful, and sometimes decides to shove the result in the basement, sometimes to publish it. It depends, and his choices can be puzzling. His XXL discography looks like a rollercoaster, with incredible summits, but also some steep declines... This Hitchhiker who appeared in Summer 2017 in fact brought together songs from an acoustic session on 11 August 1976 and which figure, by and large, on the albums he brought out in the five years previous: Pocahontas (on Rust Never Sleeps in 1979, including some overdubs), Powderfinger (also on Rust Never Sleeps, recorded live with Crazy Horse), Captain Kennedy (on Hawks & Doves in 1980), Ride My Llama (again, on Rust Never Sleeps, a solo live performance), Hitchhiker (on Le Noise en 2010, on electric guitar), Campaigner (on Decade in 1977, missing a verse), Human Highway (on Comes A Time in 1978, recorded as a group) and The Old Country Waltz (on American Stars 'n Bars in 1977, with Crazy Horse). There are also two completely new numbers: Hawaii and Give Me Strength… If all that sounds a little warmed-over or for fans only, the beauty of the versions offered up on this striking compilation renders the result unmissable. These compositions are of the highest calibre. But the performances are truly inspired. A pure marvel. © MZ/Qobuz

For Neil Young, the early to mid-'70s was a time marked by his first taste of an initial revulsion to superstardom. In the wake of the success of Harvest, Young went on an often unhappy journey of self-discovery and reappraisal brought on by the end of his relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress and the overdose deaths of Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry. All of this was refracted through the moody lens of a trio of studio records known as the "Ditch Trilogy": On the Beach, Tonight's the Night and Zuma. This epochal period in Young's story has now been sweepingly documented by Neil Young Archives Vol. II (1972-1976), a 10-part box set, arranged chronologically, whose first run sold out on Young's website in November 2020. Best of all, its 139 tracks, 49 of which were unreleased and 12 previously unheard new songs, are all presented here in the brilliant high-resolution sound that's a hallmark of the Neil Young Archives. While ten albums may sound like too much Young even for collectors and longtime fans, Archives Vol. II includes three previously released albums: Homegrown from 1974-75 (released in 2020), and the live albums, Tuscaloosa (2019)—a much cheerier document from the same '73 Harvest tour that produced the troubled live album, Time Fades Away—and Roxy: Tonight's The Night Live (2018) recorded the same year on the Sunset Strip with the Crazy Horse rhythm section joined by guitarist/pianist Nils Lofgren and pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith in a band Young called the Santa Monica Flyers. The new songs, many of which were previously known to collectors, include a piano and dobro-led meditation on spirituality set to a steady push-pull 7/8 rhythm entitled "Goodbye Christians on the Shore." "Sweet Joni" is a rough-hewn tribute to Young's fellow Canadian who makes a guest appearance later in this set in her song, "Raised on Robbery." Deeper in there's another quartet of new songs headlined by "Frozen Man," where the singer wonders "who could live inside this frozen man" while a tale unspools that parallels Young's emotional struggles and wanderings during this very fraught decade. As for revelations among the live recordings on Archives Vol. II, there's Odeon Budokan, a mashup of unreleased live material from a pair of 1976 shows from Budokan Hall in Tokyo and London's Hammersmith Odeon. By then, Young had recovered his confidence and emotional equilibrium and is rocking out with Crazy Horse on a familiar set that finishes with an epic version of "Cortez the Killer." Most of the collection's greatest pleasures lie in unreleased versions of previously released tunes. One of the albums here, The Old Homestead opens and closes with unreleased versions of "Love/Art Blues," a tune first officially heard on the live CSNY 1974 album and whose lyrics perfectly encapsulate the dilemma Young found himself in during the period covered by Archives Vol. II 1972-1976: "I've got the love art blues/ Don't know which one to choose/ There's really something to lose/ With these love art blues." © Robert Baird/Qobuz