In a career as uncompromising as any in popular music, Neil Young has seldom sought the creative path of least resistance, instead yielding to the mystifying influence of his own muse. With unwavering conviction – believing that the best, most inspired works flow through, rather than from, one’s consciousness – Young is a rare figure in rock, one who is inextricably attuned to his art while, at times, shamelessly expressive of his most visceral and vulnerable emotions.

Long running on his own wavelength – and not just in the realm of music, incidentally – Young has produced a canon so prolific and singular that chronicling it has posed a host of problems, not least of them being its eventual scope and format. After years of false starts and thwarted expectations, though, the first installment of what promises to be a monumental undertaking has ultimately come to fruition.

Archives, Vol. 1 (1963-1972), comprises ten discs total. Nine of these feature music culled from Young's stints in Sixties bands from the Squires to the Buffalo Springfield, and continuing through sessions with Crazy Horse and on solo LPs like Harvest and After the Gold Rush (including assorted extras like a career timeline and memorabilia). The last disc features Young’s surreal 1973 film, Journey Through the Past. As a whole, the complete collection yields a genuinely compelling perspective of the rock legend.

Perhaps the most important factor to consider, at least in terms of its contents, is that this collection does not boast dozens of previously unreleased songs. There are no lost classics that have been unearthed for this project. Rather, it contains previously unreleased versions of songs (many of which are classics) culled from their respective era.

That said, among the music discs are formerly unreleased mixes (either mono, stereo, or promotional edits), live performances, or various pressings. Point blank, this is not a substitute, what-could-have-been view of Young’s career (a la Springsteen’s Tracks box), but rather an everything-goes exhibition of one particular creative period.

Given that most of the material is well-known – at least to Young’s fans, which are who this set is geared toward – what’s worth noting is not so much which songs work and which do not (as most fans have surely inferred as much by now), but instead what distinguishes the music of this era from later ones of his career.

Article Author: Donald Gibson

A contributing music editor at Blogcritics, Donald Gibson devotes most of his writing to music criticism, paying particular attention to the craft and aesthetic of songwriting. He holds a B.A. in English from the University of South Florida.
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