When Neil Young ventured back onto the stage in 2023 after a four-year break – the longest of his career – it felt tentative, as if the training wheels were back on. He promised deep cuts only (in the end, Heart Of Gold was aired almost nightly, as was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s classic Ohio), but the unusually atmospheric album of the tour reverts to the original script and the big hits are nowhere to be heard.
Instead, I’m The Ocean, recorded with Pearl Jam in 1995, is slowed down and played as it might have been at Carnegie Hall in 1970, Young’s lonesome harmonica wail unmistakable.
