When Neil Young ventured back onto the stage in 2023 after a four-year break – the longest of his career – it felt tentative, as if the training wheels were back on. He promised deep cuts only (in the end, Heart Of Gold was aired almost nightly, as was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s classic Ohio), but the unusually atmospheric album of the tour reverts to the original script and the big hits are nowhere to be heard.
Instead, I’m The Ocean, recorded with Pearl Jam in 1995, is slowed down and played as it might have been at Carnegie Hall in 1970, Young’s lonesome harmonica wail unmistakable.
Love Earth, first taped with Crazy Horse in 2022, is turned into a campfire singalong, the audience as much a part of the act as Young himself. Buffalo Springfield’s originally jaunty I Am A Child is now sung in a surprisingly effective, almost whispered growl.
And When I Hold You In My Arms, a slightly lumpen filler on 2002’s Are You Passionate?, is tender and transfixing, with Young’s on-tour tech Bob Rice adding gently tinkling piano to his boss’s guitar.
