NEIL YOUNG WITH CRAZY HORSE – FU##IN’ UP – LTD RSD ’24 (2LP CLEAR VINYL)

Box Set, Deluxe Edition
Neil Young + Promise Of The Real’s new live album ‘Noise & Flowers’ captures the group in all their glory on their 2019 European tour. The release will be accompanied by a similarly titled concert film that’s included in the album’s 2xLP+CD+Blu-ray Box Set. ‘Noise & Flowers’ documents a 9-date tour that began just two weeks after Young’s lifetime friend and manager of more than 50 years, Elliot Roberts, passed away at age 76. Performing alongside a photograph of Roberts taped to his road case, Young approached each show as a celebratory memorial service to honor his late friend. It’s a trek the legendary singer/songwriter describes as “wondrous.” In paying tribute to the manager who guided Young’s career for over a half-century, Noise & Flowers explores all corners of his vast discography. It balances all-timer anthems (“Mr. Soul,” “Helpless,” “Rockin’ in the Free World”) with rarely aired ‘70s deep cuts (“Field of Opportunity,” “On the Beach”) and ’90s gems (“From Hank to Hendrix,” “Throw Your Hatred Down”). His frequent backing band since 2015, Promise of the Real effectively bridges the extremes in Young’s sound, infusing his raging rockers and country serenades with their casual brilliance and telepathic intuition.

When Neil Young assembles a special edition of his songs, the delight is in the details. DUME is a new limited-edition all analog vinyl pressing of 16 songs originally collected for Neil Young’s Archives Vol. II release in Fall of 2020. The recordings—some part of the historic ZUMA album sessions by Neil Young & Crazy Horse, and others previously unreleased—are a detailed look at one of the most exciting periods in Neil’s rock & roll life. DUME captures the live-wire spark of Young’s music during those years, and this full-bore attack is somewhat of a turning point for Young and the band. The mid-70’s were an era when new high-water marks were appearing everywhere. Ampage and attack were being pursued, and the songs on DUME are prime examples of what lay ahead. The 1960s had opened the floodgates on solo artists and groups using the freedom they had earned when they took control of their own musical destinies. The ’70s had begun on a high note and kept growing in creative leaps and bounds. Artists had found a way to move in their own direction and follow a path that opened before them.

Neil Young, Crazy Horse, and producer David Briggs were living in the Point Dume area of Malibu and recording at their own direction. The songs Young was writing on the DUME collection came at a steady stream, and after the twisty turns of TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT, the group felt open and free. ZUMA, named after the beach they lived near, came together in wide-open sessions that had the air of freedom itself. In assembling DUME—Disc 8 of the Archives Vol. II box set—Young’s unfolding plan was to weave songs from the album with unreleased tracks and mixes from that period. DUME is somewhat of a Mad Hatter’s take using the ZUMA album as a starting point and expanding that scope into a brand-new entity. Now it is available with the superior sound it was recorded in, via analog master tapes and vinyl.

These sixteen tracks from the ZUMA-recording period on this limited-edition vinyl pressing turn into a somewhat kaleidoscopic view of the era, and really present an album that becomes its own being. The freshness of never-heard-before versions of well-known songs, along with the original songs themselves on newly pressed high-quality vinyl from the original analog tape masters, is like an audio reset for everything gathered. In the always-evolving efforts of Young, the past and the future meld into one never-ending presentation of his musical life in the highest audio sound quality available, and in new collections that allow an original light of what he’s accomplished so far.