AMONG the many jewels in 2020’s Archives Volume II: 1972–1976, Dume’s alternate vision of Zuma illustrated just how astonishingly prolific Neil Young’s mid-’70s were. Named after the Point Dume area of Malibu where co-producer David Briggs lived, Dume expanded the original album – minus “Through My Sails” – with an additional half-hour of unreleased gold.

Young had already cut a solo “Kansas” for the doomed Homegrown in January 1975, but chose to revisit the song five months later with Crazy Horse. Written in the aftermath of his split from Carrie Snodgress, its new electric setting amplifies the simmering tension of Young’s lyric. The similarly themed “Hawaii” is a minor wonder too, its inviting groove tipped with razor-edged guitars, in typical fashion. Young wasn’t quite done with the song, revisiting it in solo form for the Hitchhiker album – a record that subsequently lived, unseen, in the Archives for four decades. And that beg, borrow, steal ethos that runs throughout Young’s entire career saw Dume become the source of three other key Hitchhiker songs. In its original Crazy Horse iteration, the fabulous “Ride My Llama” is riffy and dynamic. Similarly, “Pocahontas” benefits from a full-band setting, right down to the doo-wop harmonies. Yet it’s the freewheeling, seven-minute (often revisited in the studio) “Powderfinger” that seems to embody Young’s workin-progress aesthetic. Seemingly struggling to find that perfect studio take, with the band or on his own, the song finally found an official release on Rust Never Sleeps, courtesy of a live take from a 1978 Crazy Horse show in Denver. Of Dume’s other treasures, the windswept, vampy “Born To Run” was the first track that the new-look Crazy Horse attempted in the wake of Homegrown. Young later returned to it during the Ragged Glory sessions (1990), but he evidently never felt satisfied enough to ever perform it live. Sadly, remarkably, the same goes for “Hawaii” (lauded by many Young aficionados as his finest song that’s yet to be played live). “Too Far Gone” and “No One Seems To Know” (Young all alone at the piano) constitute Dume’s more introspective moments. Both songs premiered live in ’76 – captured on Songs For Judy – but it wasn’t until 1989’s Freedom that a countrified “Too Far Gone” first found a home.