Young

Official Release Series is the name Neil Young has given to the personally approved remasters of his core catalog. The series debuted in 2012 with a four-album box that contained Young's first four albums and continued on with his next four albums: Time Fades Away, On the Beach, Tonight's the Night, and Zuma. This set came out on vinyl in 2014 and on CD in 2017; the latter marked the first-ever CD release of Time Fades Away. Whether they're heard in new vinyl pressings or CDs, the remasters are newly vivid and robust, the best this music has ever been presented, and that's reason enough for hardcore Neil Young fans to purchase these titles again.

Given the quirkiness of Neil Young's recording career, with its frequent cancellations of releases and last-minute rearrangements of material, it is a relief to report that this two-disc compilation is so conventional and so satisfying. A 35-track selection of the best of Young's work between 1966 and 1976, it includes songs performed by Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and the Stills-Young Band, as well as solo work. In addition to five unreleased songs, Decade offers such key tracks as the Springfield's "Mr. Soul," "Broken Arrow," and "I Am a Child"; "Sugar Mountain," a song that had appeared only as a single before; "Cinnamon Girl," "Down by the River," and "Cowgirl in the Sand" from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere; "Southern Man" and the title track from After the Gold Rush; and "Old Man" and the chart-topping "Heart of Gold" from Harvest. This is the material that built Young's reputation between 1966 and 1972, although he is more idiosyncratic with the later material, including the blockbusters "Like a Hurricane" and "Cortez the Killer" but mixing in more unreleased recordings as the set draws to a close.

Written and recorded in 1973 shortly after the death of roadie Bruce Berry, Neil Young's second close associate to die of a heroin overdose in six months (the first was Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten), Tonight's the Night was Young's musical expression of grief, combined with his rejection of the stardom he had achieved in the late '60s and early '70s.

Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968 the third installment from Neil Young's Archives – although through some weird filing system this is Vol. 00, possibly because this dates before either of the previously released volumes in Archives Performance Series – culls highlights from Neil Young's two shows at Canterbury House in Ann Arbor, MI on November 9 and 10, 1968…