Album: Neil Young & Crazy Horse

Even by Neil Young's standards, two albums in seven months is a touch over-generous. This is the first in his vault-clearing Archive Performance series. It's a cracker, too, featuring Young and Crazy Horse on a 1970 showcase of material mostly drawn from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, the album that established him as a serious solo contender and lead guitar stylist. The two keystones, accordingly, are versions of "Down by the River" and "Cowgirl in the Sand" stretching to 12 and 16 minutes respectively, characteristically questing bouts of tectonic guitar extemporisation hewn into jagged emotional blocks by Young's tense, stabbing lead lines. The show offers a thrilling affirmation of the synergy between band and leader: rarely before have the contradictions of the Crazy Horse style - the tight but loose playing, and the tough fragility of the sound - been captured with such freshness.

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Down by the River', 'Cowgirl in the Sand', 'Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere'