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Neil Young Archives 2 – it’s a bit of all right

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It only came out yesterday and there are ten discs’ worth, so I haven’t given it the requisite six listens – in fact I haven’t even got to the end yet – but boy does it contain some gems so far.

I’m not one of the people who shelled out for the sold out ‘deluxe’ CD box set and nor will I be forking out for the ‘retail’ edition at £120 – for which you get three discs most NY fans, or at least those who prefer to obtain the physical product, will have already bought (Homegrown, Tuscaloosa and Live at the Roxy).

But then, I’m happy to stream. NYA2 is yet to appear on Spotify so its over to Neil’s dedicated streaming service on his Neil Young Archives website, which I’ve resisted till now. I initially baulked at signing up for a paid service (charging for music, in this day and age!) but it’s just $1.99 a month, so over the course of a year not much more than you’d have paid for a couple of CDs in the old days.

The player is a bit glitchy and clunky and there’s no option of creating playlists, which I thought I’d need given how patchy the first Archives set was. But NYA2 is beautifully sequenced and the ‘rarities’ seldom disappoint. Many of them I’d heard in some form or other via various bootlegs over the years, so it’s lovely to finally hear songs like Pushed It Over the End, the CSNY version of Human Highway and Love/Art Blues in pristine quality – but there are real surprises too.

Is anyone else listening to Archives 2?

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Comments

  2. 63 “previously unreleased” songs. Admittedly in most cases this means an alternate version of a song that has been released – but often they are sufficiently different to be worth bothering with. In this case ‘unreleased’ doesn’t simply mean a live version – indeed often the reverse is true, so what you get here are original studio cuts of songs that have otherwise only appeared across his live albums.

    There are 12 songs that have been unreleased in any version and while some of these might have been better left that way, some are very very good indeed. At least to these ears, on the strength of my not-quite-6-listens.

    If you have any interest at all in Neil Young, at $1.99 Archives 2 is well worth dipping into and way, way better than NYA1.

  4. I bought the Big Box (second release: box due in march) and to my surprise and relief my hi-res download code arrived by email at 3am Saturday morning. The download site is a bit clunky but I got it sorted in the end and put it all on my Pono.

    I listened to it for about 6 hours last night. It is wonderful, and much, much better than Archives I. It is also very intelligently curated into 10 discs/sections. It shines a light on Neil’s 1970s body of work. I am in awe of just how great this collection is. I haven’t heard it all yet: I started to listen to it all in order but moved on to cherry picking. I ended my evening by listening to the Dume and Odeon Budokan sets in their entirety. It is impossible to pick highlights as everything is incredible. It even made me rethink my opinion of the Stills Young Band LP as the alternate versions on here are so very good. It’s been a long wait but worth it.

  6. Wonder why this didn’t get a big Afterword review, instead of another Iron Maiden live album.

    Have er … managed to find a version of this, will start listening today.

  9. ‘Charging for music in this day and age?’ – what, they should let us have it for free? God knows why they would still keep making it were that the case.

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