In today’s jargon music isn’t released, it drops. Just don’t drop Neil Young’s 10 CD box set on your foot. The second installment of Young’s ongoing project, Archives Vol. II: 1972-1976, draws on the “Ditch Trilogy,” the albums Time Fades Away, On the Beach and Tonight's the Night. In the liner notes to his first compilation album 1977’s Decade, Young famously declared, “’Heart of Gold’” put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch.”
For fans, the real prize in the crackerjacks here is the previously unreleased material. Young was never a stranger to the grey-market bootleg racket, but he offers up plenty of gems that have never before been released. Thankfully he is a pack rat and a control freak.
Young’s modus operandi has been to trickle some of these out as standalone CDs before being collected in the box sets—the live concert recordings Tuscaloosa and Roxy, shine a light on the dark era when Young lost roadie Bruce Berry and his foil in Crazy Horse Danny Whitten to heroin. The music he made is harrowing and honest. The long-rumored Homegrown album finally sees the light of day and the live material from 1976’s Odeon Budokan presents Crazy Horse MK II, flying the flannel in the face of punk rock’s doorstep.
To Young’s credit he has offered options to hear his music in the best quality on whatever platforms are available. The artwork is wonderfully done with cover images utilizing outtakes of familiar LPs or new images from the era, all with titles penned in Young’s familiar scrawl.
What is most interesting is to view Young’s work in perspective. Not unlike his hero Orson Welles, he chops and channels the material. Often setting songs aside for when the time is right. “Powderfinger” and “Pocahontas” show up on 1975’s Dume (a sly doppelganger to Zuma) only to officially drop four years later on Rust Never Sleeps, the album that undoubtedly will be the anchor for Young’s Volume III.
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In the meantime, Young never sleeps. In November he released The Times, an EP of some of his classic politically charged songs that were recorded at home for his unvarnished Fireside Sessions video series. Back in December, Young removed the paywall and offered the Archives II box set for free for a time. If you missed that opportunity, the set is available for purchase in a retail and a deluxe edition, the latter at $249.98 includes a 250-page book—a book most of us will never see. But don’t fret, track down a copy of Jimmy McDonough’s book Shakey. To date it remains the final word on Neil Young.
