Neil Young to Feel

Capturing a performance given at the Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut just three days after the celebrated concert documented on Live at Massey Hall 1971 – a show popular for years among bootleggers but released officially as part of Neil Young's Archives Performance Series in March 2007 – Young Shakespeare is very similar in tone and feel to its cousin. The set list is similar, too…

Eldorado is the 21st release from Neil Young, one of the most prolific artists around today. Released as a special EP in Australia and Japan, and running at only 25 minutes, Eldorado is not much of a value. However, in that 25 minutes there is some of the hardest rocking music that Neil had put out, pre-Ragged Glory. Recorded with the Restless (making for the joke, Neil Young and the Restless), this is a wonderful accomplishment for only three players. The other musicians on the record are Chad Cromwell on drums and Rick "The Bass Player" Rosas, who both also appear on the album This Note's For You. One of the great things about Neil is that after playing with people such as Cromwell and Rosas (and more recently Booker T and the MGs), he gets a great idea for what would be fun to do next and does it. Unfortunately, this is the only time that Neil ever did anything like release less than a full album.

During the 2014 promo campaign for Pono, his high-end digital audio device, Neil Young called his forthcoming album A Letter Home "an art project," which is an appropriate term for this curious collection of covers from his contemporaries. It's not so much that the choice of songs is unusual - nearly all of them are from the '60s and '70s, years when Young was also active, but a handful ("Crazy," "Since I Met You Baby," "I Wonder If I Care as Much") date from the late '50s or early '60s - but the recording method. Young headed down to Jack White's Third Man Records in Nashville where Jack installed a refurbished Voice-O-Graph booth, a device designed to allow a user to "Make Your Own Record" by cutting a song or message directly to vinyl…

Old folkie that he is, Neil Young harbors a soft spot for songs as protest, and The Monsanto Years is full of them. Where he often railed against war, here the purported target is the agricultural company Monsanto, a firm that, among other things, specializes in genetically modified crops, but Young uses that as a pivot to rage against all manner of modern outrages. Apathy among the populace, avarice among corporations, and cultural homogenization provide the throughline on The Monsanto Years, and while the weathered hippie takes some time to lay down his electric guitar and breathe, this isn't a mournful album like Living with War, his W-era missive. This is a raging record and to that end, Young hired the Promise of the Real, a ragtag outfit led by Willie Nelson's guitarist son Lukas, to approximate Crazy Horse's lop-legged lumber…