This legendary album, the centrepiece of the so-called “Doom Trilogy”, has waited nearly 30 years to be issued on CD, such has been its author’s reputed disenchantment with it. Over that time, On The Beach has become a sort of Holy Grail to Neil Young CD buyers, its continuing unavailability adding to a notoriety which began with the first round of reviews the album received in summer 1974. Early reaction to On The Beach was almost entirely negative and it was only after a certain amount of hindsight had set in that it was accorded any respect, let alone admiration. Now, at last, it’s with us again, and we have another chance to evaluate what many feel to be one of the outstanding achievements of Young’s career.

Made in spring 1974, On The Beach was chronologically the last of the Doom Trilogy, following 1973’s Time Fades Away and Tonight’s The Night, recorded in August 1973 but unreleased until June 1975. As such, the bleak, inward-looking, semi-exhausted On The Beach, while sounding like the eye of the storm, was actually the aftermath of a dark exorcism carried through in the previous two albums.

The context of this period of Young’s life was a desperate one. On the rebound from the Roman excesses of being on the road with CSNY, Young was disillusioned with the compromised idealism of the late-’60s counterculture and disgusted with the bloated complacency of the American music scene of the early ’70s. More sharply, he felt painful grief for the deaths by heroin of two close friends: Danny Whitten, guitarist with his backing band Crazy Horse, and Bruce Berry, guitar roadie for CSNY. In particular, Young was haunted by remorse and horror at the death of Whitten, who had OD’d after being sacked from sessions for Young’s second solo album. The Time Fades Away tour, from which the 1973 live album of the same name was drawn, chronicles Young’s dire mood in the aftermath of this personal disaster.

Everything that was oppressing Young in 1973 came together in the dark howl of Tonight’s The Night, a record described by Uncut editor Allan Jones as “the sound of calamity, a rock’n’roll Golgotha, a place of death and skulls”. So oppressive and deranged was the accompanying tour that many expected Young to expire as an artist by the end of it; indeed, there was a rumour, made semi-official by a wire-service news story from Paris at the end of the tour, that Young had died from a heroin overdose. He hadn’t, of course, and somewhere between then and the spring of the following year he managed to assemble On The Beach.

The album features a mixed roster of musicians, including appearances by David Crosby and Graham Nash from CSNY. The basic rhythm unit is that of Crazy Horse: Bill Talbot on bass and Ralph Molina on drums. Alternative rhythm players include The Band’s drummer Levon Helm and bassist Tim Drummond. Auxiliary guitar duties are divided between Ben Keith (slide, steel and dobro), Rusty Kershaw (slide and fiddle) and George Whitsell. Young himself plays guitar, banjo, piano and harmonica. While the primary mood of On The Beach is introspective and philosophical, it contains some savage sentiments, especially on “Revolution Blues”, which blackly commemorates the Manson gang as a means of exorcising Young’s own revulsion at the intemperance of the West Coast rock’n’roll lifestyle: “I see bloody fountains/And 10 million dune buggies comin’ down the mountains/I hear that Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars/But I hate them worse than lepers and I’ll kill them in their cars.”

Often couching its expression in blues form or variants thereof, On The Beach is a stark, slow examination of Young’s personal aesthetic in the wake of a period in which he had deliberately turned his back on the commercial success of After The Gold Rush and Harvest.

The album unfolds at a measured to plodding pace, the playing (which sounds mostly like first takes) skeletal and sometimes fumbling. Young’s approach to his material is audibly tired and close to throwaway-yet the listener is almost always gripped by the sensation that what’s being expressed is the threadbare truth.

On The Beach is bookended by two expressions of wistful nostalgia for “the old folkie days” in Toronto?”the good old days” when comrades in music stayed up all night long, singing for the sheer buzz of it, earning little in the way of money but gaining much in terms of soul satisfaction and learning all the time. The album’s finale, “Ambulance Blues” (musically a cousin of Bert Jansch’s heroin threnody, “Needle Of Death”), puts this nostalgia into perspective: “It’s easy to get buried in the past/When you try to make a good thing last.” A melancholy song, it’s also the final working-out of the dilemma central to On The Beach: how to regain and maintain authenticity when the pressure is on to present a false facade and when life itself is almost too awfully real to allow any space for creativity.

How, then, does On The Beach stand up after 29 years? The answer: like a classic. There’s only one slightly weak track (“Vampire Blues”). The rest remains as nakedly convincing and confessional as it did when it first appeared. It’s easy to see why Young has doubts about it. On the one hand, the album is altogether too close to home; on the other, its almost improvisational realisation is, at times, equally close to complete collapse. There’s a fragile vulnerability about songs like “See The Sky About To Rain”, “For The Turnstiles” and “Motion Pictures” that’s almost translucent. The approach, in other words, is perilously near to self-pity here, although that lapse is never actually allowed.

As a document of a despairing personal low, On The Beach would be a kind of masterpiece by any standard. Yet it’s the album’s inner strength, its refusal to die or evade the issue, its ultimate squaring up to a regenerated future which make it such a moving experience. Rock music rarely comes as close to closedown as it does here, but the ultimate truth is that On The Beach is a positive experience, a catharsis. It’s good to have it back at last.

Between 1959 and 1964, The Drifters had 16 American hits, many written by top teams from New York’s Brill Building, notably including “Save The Last Dance For Me”, “Up On The Roof”, “On Broadway” and “Under The Boardwalk”. These are all-time classics by any measure and any collection featuring them is worth having. On this two-disc set, a great deal else from the group’s extensive catalogue appears, not always to much effect. In the absence of something more selective, this is worth considering.

Before embarking on his Fantastic Adventure with Gene Clark, The Dillards’ founder member issued this statement of intent?a sweet fusion of traditional folk tunes, Ralph Stanley-flavoured bluegrass and white-boy US blues.

All the ingredients are in place?Jim Dickson production, Bernie Leadon’s guitar, John Hartford’s fiddle and Gene (on harmonica) among the crew, all providing a taste of that new ’60s baroque which lends this style its longevity and charm.

To some, the Captain’s 1982 No 1 romp through Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Happy Talk” was the ultimate punk sell-out. Silly beggars! It was, of course, a hilarious act of screwball subversion.

Either way, its Goonish novelty was unrepresentative of the two albums that followed. As the best bits collated here show, solo Sensible traded in the same satirical Englishness as The Kinks and Madness (“Croydon”, “A Nice Cup Of Tea”). His lovable “Rapper’s Delight” pastiche “Wot” still raises a smile, but did 1984’s touching “There’s More Snakes Than Ladders” really only reach No 57? He was robbed.

After instigating punk’s Xerox bible, fanzine mogul Perry decided to “have a go myself” (as he explains in his enlightening liner notes), thus forming ATV. His earliest efforts remain his best, notably the reggae-tinged confession of impotence, “Love Lies Limp” (apparently a chide against the libido of journalist Caroline Coon, the then-girlfriend of The Clash’s Paul Simonon) and 77’s shrewd dismissal of punk bandwagon jumpers “How Much Longer”. This double CD also traces his perseverance thereafter, from dub to jangling ’80s indie. A mixed bag musically, though consistently entertaining in Perry’s lyrical outlook.

London-based quartet Ten Benson have been plugging their hard rock have been pluggiffs and caustic humour around the UK underground for the best part of a decade without ever troubling the mainstream. Danger Of Deaf is half best-of and half live album, featuring tracks culled from their two previous LPs (2000’s Hiss and last year’s Satan Kidney Pie) and re-recorded in one take to recreate the full Benson live experience. Overblown at the best of times, their AC/DC-aping rawk now begs comparison with Spinal Tap. The full catalogue of rock histrionics are employed here: distorted vocals from frontman Chris Teckkam, copious amounts of feedback and pitch-black lyrics. Novelty Christmas single “Black Snow” and the guitar riff on “Nobody’s Wife” are superb.

Impossible to take seriously, so just turn it up to 11.

Marriott’s career after The Small Faces initially centred on the group he formed with Peter Frampton, Humble Pie. After six years of touring in the US, Marriott left Humble Pie and attempted to reignite The Small Faces, but when this failed, he fell back on returns to Humble Pie and stints in Europe with Packet Of Three, releasing two solo albums before his death in ’91. This patchy compilation gives an idea of the music he made in his later years, but offers nothing by way of documentation.

The husband and wife tag team of Delaney and Bonnie hit that cusp where Eric Clapton and the entire ’70s roadshow jam scene began, growling and grinding along similar lines to Sticky Fingers-era Stones. This was, their last album together (they divorced in ’72), but it retains a frisson thanks to Clapton and Dave Mason’s guitar work on “Only You And I Know” and the early “Groupie”?or “Superstar” for Leon Russell (or Carpenters) fans. Pass the chicken and listen, y’all.

Hamilton Bohannon

SUMMERTIME GROOVE

BOTH UNIVERSAL

The Undisputed Truth always seemed like Norman Whitfield’s musical laboratory. Side one of Face To Face is a gem; “You Make Your Own Heaven” is stealthy, clenched-teeth funk which simmers with tension rather than exploding, while “What It Is?” deconstructs itself as it goes along in the manner of PiL’s “Fodderstompf”.

The Bohannon album kicks off with “Let’s Start The Dance” and motors along as a streetwise equivalent of Moroder’s “From Here To Eternity”. Its blank grooves and agitated undertow anticipate both house music and the Talking Heads of “I Zimbra”.

Is it fair to say Kevin Ayers, in this extraordinary body of work from three decades ago, achieved what Syd Barrett might have had he got himself together? Newly departed from Soft Machine, this enigmatic oddball immediately set about assembling the songs and sounds for his 1969 debut Joy Of A Toy. What’s striking about this remarkable record is the playfulness of its experimentation. From the avant-garde brass band of the title track via the askew lounge music of “Song For Insane Times” to the epic ballad “Lady Rachael”, the mood is liberated and open-minded. Badly Drawn Boy and Jim O’Rourke owe this record a bundle.

On 1970’s Shooting At The Moon Ayers assembled an unbelievably disparate group called The Whole World, including classical keyboardist David Bedford, improv saxophonist Lol Coxhill and a teenage Mike Oldfield on bass. The subdued improvisation works beautifully on sardonic ballads like “May I?”, and Oldfield’s bass playing is among the most inventive on any British rock LP. Ayers’ masterpiece, however, is 1971’s Whatevershebringswesing (again with Bedford and Oldfield), a fusion of seemingly opposed elements. It ranges from lighthearted rockers like “Stranger In Blue Suede Shoes” via the bucolically hypnotic title track to the startling “Song From The Bottom Of A Well”, which anticipates PiL’s METAL BOX LP by eight years.

Bananamour (1973) saw Ayers moving closer to the rock mainstream, but it remains daring. Highlights include the drone-rock of “Decadence” and “Oh! Wot A Dream”, a tribute to Barrett; who contributes guitar to “Religious Experience”, a bonus track on Joy Of A Toy.

We’ve rediscovered Drake, Martyn and Harper; it’s time now to give Ayers your attention.