Neil Young Archives, Vol. 3 (1976-1987) [Box Set]

The Odeon version is everything you remember, played out in a lunar glow, Young and Frank Sampedro’s guitars like burning rivers flowing into each other, Neil’s guitar emerging from the maelstrom like something blown by a solar wind, at the time unlike anything you’d heard. .... Of the unreleased songs on these discs, it’s not hard to see why some of them have never found a home. [Oct 2024, p.44]

Archives Vol. III is the most substantial of Neil Young’s three archival releases. It is staggering in scope.

To his credit, Young pulls no punches on himself in this collection — the cringeworthy material is presented alongside the great stuff, adding up to a warts-and-all document of those challenging years. And like the new material Young continues to release to this day, it ranges between brilliant and middling and flawed, but always unapologetic.

For better or worse, Archives III compiles content from Neil’s ill-fated tenure on Geffen Records. This phase of his career has yet to receive the rethinking afforded ‘The Ditch Trilogy’ from the previous decade, so it remains to be seen what demographic finds these outtakes revelatory. Nevertheless, a plethora of previously unavailable selections from that period reaffirms that Young always takes his work seriously, even if, at times, he seems nonchalant to a fault (or, worse, illogical).

Spanning 11 years, Archives III can sometimes feel broad and sprawling. .... But Young never worried too much about satisfying others, anyway, and the outpouring of material only adds to his legacy.