Album Review: Hitchhiker, Neil Young

I had kind of given up on Neil Young, his last purple patch – Freedom, Ragged Glory, Harvest Moon – having ended 25 years ago. 2012’s Psychedelic Pill was okay, but most marriages don’t last as long as those songs. I may be missing out on some great records, but I doubt it.

This legendary one night taping from 1976, pausing only for “weed, beer, or coke” according to his Special Deluxe memoir, is a different banana altogether. Some of these songs surfaced on unreleased album/bootleg Chrome Dreams in 1977, and on several subsequent sanctioned releases, but this is the first time the complete document has been officially available.

The acoustic session, just guitar and a hint of harmonica, opens with two career highlights, ‘Pocahontas’ and ‘Powderfinger’. Released in varyingly different forms alongside ‘Ride My Llama’ on 79’s Rust Never Sleeps, you might miss some of the guitar wrestling, but these versions have a power all their own. According to producer David Briggs, Young was, amazingly, writing them as he went along.

The title track, smothered under dense layers on 2010’s Le Noise, is a revelation, and ‘Human Highway’, and ‘The Old Country Waltz’, found on Comes A Time and American Stars ‘N Bars previously, benefit from this more intimate setting. ‘Captain Kennedy’ and ‘Campaigner’ are as close as makes no difference to the versions on Hawks & Doves and Decade, not that there’s anything wrong with that, and if the previously unreleased ‘Hawaii’ and ‘Give me Strength’ aren’t as good as everything else here, they’re not far behind.

He doesn’t, of course, make records as freewheeling as this anymore, but we can be thankful Young finally saw fit to release this rather fine one.

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