Music Review : It's been so long since I've added to this blog that Neil's actually issued Archives!!!!.......

Strange but true!

After an interminable period of teasers and delays the first volume of Neil Young's Archives have now been released to the wider world.

There's been much debate about the format in which this is going to appear but ultimately fans were given three choices:-

• the music on an 8-CD set
  
• music and video on a 10-DVD set along with the first official release of Journey Through The Past, or
  
• in Blu-Ray format with the same content as the DVD but with the promise of extra content along the way via links to the internet. (There is also wider options when it comes to listening whilst browsing other content than on a DVD)

Not wanting to miss the opportunity of the extra content I decided ultimately to go for the Blu-Ray version. This presented me with a couple of issues:-

• firstly, I didn't own a Blu-Ray player! Well, that was easily resolved with a visit to Richer Sounds -I have to say that, Neil apart, it's been a worthwhile investment as the couple of films that I've seen in this format have been stunning. In addition, the upscaling feature does mean that your DVD's do look better as well
  
• secondly, being hooked up to my telly (and no, I'm not getting a surround system!) I wasn't going to get the best out of the sound. Only one option then, get the CD version as well!!

So was it all worth it? To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced.

Young promised early in the project's gestation that "it was all going to be on there". Sounds great, except that it isn't. The first major disappointment is that not everything from the originally released album is on there. I understand that Neil intends to now issue these in remastered form, and owning just the first generation CD's I'll feel somewhat tempted, if not obliged, to purchase these. Poor show on this count, Neil, because as far as I can see there's still loads of capacity to have done this.

Next up is the fact that the albums issued over the past couple of years as the Neil Young Performance Series are also included. This means that the additional material on the Archives is considerably less attractive as a result. Another poor show.

And there's more! All Neil Young fans know that there's load of other material out there from this era that could have been included but hasn't been. Indeed, the set could possibly have been made up of material leaving the official releases off entirely. Young has built a reputation as a rewriter of history (for example, his shameful exclusion of some tracks from the Buffalo Springfield box set) and he appears to be continuing in this vein. It's not all there, Neil - only that which you want us to hear. Not good enough.

As for the other material, the documents and memorabilia are interesting but having had a peek there's not much that I'll be searching out quickly. The video material is good but, so far at least, it falls into the category where we know that there's more available.

The packaging is good but more bulky for the DVD/BluRay sets than was strictly necessary.

Having said all that, the music is uniformly superb. However, this isn't a set that the casual fan is going to buy but neither is it a set to get the already committed fan too excited by.

Raise the bar higher next time, Neil