Neil Young & Crazy Horse - 'At The Fillmore 1970' (WEA) Released 13/11/06

"This is a song from my next album," Neil Young mutters prior to the crisp country rock of 'Wonderin'. As befits the grizzled Canadian's reputation for scrapping albums, tours and bands at a moment's notice, said platter never saw the light of day. Just when it seemed similar fate had befallen the long-promised 'Archives' series, rumoured to be on the brink of release for a decade or so but postponed as Young keeps churning out new produce, the first installment of the epic vault-clearing project hits the record racks in the shape of this sizzling 1970 live recording from New York's hallowed Fillmore East.

Fans equipped with a scholarly knowledge of the proto-grunge icons oeuvre may whinge about the absence of the concert's acoustic half. The rest can be chuffed that the sadly short-lived original incarnation of Young's best-loved backing band Crazy Horse finally has the luxurious live document it deserves. From the stomping barnyard boogie of 'Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere' to the lovelorn glide of 'Winterlong', these six tracks represent rock 'n' roll at its joyously contradictory best, combine as they do the hard-ass sneer of early Stones with the heartache-harvesting musings of singer-songwriterdom.

The loose long-hair funk of drummer Ralph Molina and bassist Billy Talbot charges Young's tunes with attitude and flair his softly strumming Laurel Canyon contemporaries could only dream of, but the real star of the show is Danny Whitten. Whitten grabs the spotlight for 'Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown's hard-hitting ode to scoring heroin, the celebratory exuberance of which soured indefinitely with the singer-guitarist's fatal overdose in 1972, a tragedy that inspired Young's 1975 downer classic 'Tonight's The Night'. Whitten's hoarsely soulful bark is the perfect vocal match for Young's strangely enchanting strained whine, whilst his choppily taut guitar lines provide a potent launching pad for Young's epic bouts of stinging fretboard wrestling. Tectonic plates shift, regimes collapse and seasons change whilst Crazy Horse remain locked in semi-endless two-chord vamps on 'Down By The River' and 'Cowgirl In The Sand', at a whopping 16 minutes a towering titan amongst jams. It could so easily succumb to noodlesome jam band aimlessness, but the band cook up a loping groove that keeps the proceedings airborne, inviting newcomers and Young scholars alike to join in on the hypnotic fun.

No wonder this sound - tough but tender, ragged yet tight, improvisatory but song-focused - has proven incredibly influential over the years, with the likes of My Morning Jacket most likely bowing down to a worn-out copy of 1979's 'Live Rust' on a daily basis. Now they've got a brand new top-drawer live attraction to draw from in their worshipping rituals.