NEIL YOUNG
SONGS FOR JUDY
SHAKEY PICTURES RECORDS/REPRISE
★★★★
Seventy-something Neil Young today, looking back at his 1970s
Evergreen acoustic snapshots from the road circa ’76
The winter of 1976 was a skin-shedding juncture for Neil Young. Having spent the early part of the year tearing it up with Crazy Horse, the songwriter’s US solo tour that November was a different beast, plucking songs from both his top shelf and the neglected corners of his catalogue, stripping them to a kernel and letting that ragged acoustic guitar, wheezy harmonica and gossamer vocal do the rest. By cherrypicking songs from eight different dates along the road, Songs For Judy feels like a shoebox full of Polaroid snapshots chucked over a motel bed; it doesn’t have quite the coherence of a front-toback concert, but it’s hard to imagine that Young has ever been on more intimate live form.