Albums to watch

Archives Volume 1: 1963-1971

Neil Young

Archives Volume 1: 1963-1971

116 songs, 8 CDs, 40 previously unreleased tracks - and that's just volume 1

ADM rating[?]

7.8

Label
Reprise
UK Release date
08/06/2009
  1. 10.0 |   Uncut

    It’s hard not to believe that Neil the tech-head has not laid down a template for all future retrospectives (one can imagine Dylan and McCartney, the only artists of comparable stature and longevity, paying close attention). There’s more, too much more, to come, but for now, Volume One will do just fine.
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  2. 10.0 |   Daily Telegraph

    Consistently electrifying, overloaded with fabulous melodies and lazily brilliant playing, this is the full story of one of rock’s true greats — or at least, the complete early chapters. Vol. 2, covering the rest of the Seventies, could be even better
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  3. 9.0 |   Rolling Stone

    Once you get started searching the discs' submenus for rare photos, yellowed newspaper clips, import-only 45 sleeves and lost radio interviews, you may suddenly find the sun has set and the tea kettle has boiled dry. And imagine: This represents barely one-quarter of the man's work.
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  4. 9.0 |   The Guardian

    Trying to fathom out the reason Young does anything is a thankless task, as Archives - a project no reasonable man would ever have undertaken - proves
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  5. 8.0 |   The Times

    Right now, the idea of being tantalised by what isn’t on the first volume of Archives seems perverse, given what it actually includes.
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  6. 8.0 |   Q

    Print edition only

  7. 7.0 |   Pitchfork

    In a purely musical sense, Archives' real selling point isn't so much the tracklist as the remastering. And make no doubt about it: Next to the budget-line CD issues that Reprise rushed to the market in the late 80s, the new versions sound spectacular, breathing new life into these old warhorses
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  8. 6.0 |   The Irish Times

    That it was a hugely exciting time is well conveyed. There are plenty of out-takes, and alternate versions of key songs – such as Sugar Mountain – but it is something of a trial wading through
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  9. 5.0 |   Pitchfork

    ...these versions adhere so closely to the studio versions, there's really little reason beyond completist impulse to pick them up again in this form
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