
Neil Young - Songs For Judy
The latest in Young’s gaining-steam series of archival releases, Songs for Judy finds him again revisiting 1976, just as he did with last year’s Hitchhiker, a collection of unreleased studio recordings. Culled from the acoustic sets of Young’s November 1976 tour with Crazy Horse, the two-dozen-plus songs on Songs for Judy find him ambling through his back and future catalog. He tries out newly written material like “Pocahontas” and “White Line,” pleases the fans with faithful versions of “Heart of Gold” and “After the Gold Rush,” returns to his Buffalo Springfield days with an unplugged but still taut “Mr. Soul,” and takes a few deep-cut forays; “The Losing End” has never sounded more country-lonesome. But that wide-ranging set list doesn’t fully hint at the charm of Songs for Judy, which takes its title from its opening monologue: a seemingly stoned Young rambling on drolly about how he’d spotted the late Judy Garland in the audience, who asked him about “the business.” -Rolling Stone