So, the start of Neil Young’s six-night stand in London, and a lot of the schtick will be familiar to anyone who’s read Damien’s review of the Edinburgh show. Neil bumbles around the stage in what we might optimistically call a Proustian reverie, warms his hands on a stage light, plays “Ambulance Blues” and stops time dead in its tracks. Please head over to my Wild Mercury Sound blog to read the full review. Thanks.

So, the start of Neil Young’s six-night stand in London, and a lot of the schtick will be familiar to anyone who’s read Damien’s review of the Edinburgh show. Neil bumbles around the stage in what we might optimistically call a Proustian reverie, warms his hands on a stage light, plays “Ambulance Blues” and stops time dead in its tracks. I’m sure plenty of us know he’s been playing “Ambulance Blues” on this bunch of dates, but still, the shock of actually hearing the song live, the way it keeps unravelling, at once elegant and wracked, the way Young lets notes hang in the air, never rushes the next line, is extraordinary. I was playing “On The Beach” this morning at breakfast, and it struck me how much the song suits his older voice; the curious sweetness of its tone, that affecting mix of experience and, perhaps, increased uncertainty which he brings to the song now. This is my first time seeing Neil Young play under a roof, my previous four or five epiphanies involving giant fields, giant solos and, usually, Crazy Horse. Consequently, it’s also the first time I’ve seen one of his conceptual performance art pieces, which the first acoustic half seems to be. Two mild criticisms: Neil’s dumbshow is endearing, but pure ham; and the paintings which are ferried about the stage by the artists aren’t terribly good. We can live with this, I think, when the songs have such deathless potency. The clutter of stage gear, the junk accumulated from a lifetime of performance, seems connected with the "Archives" project; maybe when we see the CD-ROM, DVD or whatever format it eventually materialises as, some of this ephemera will be reflected on the disc. The choice of songs also emphasise that sense of arcana, nostalgia, especially “From Hank To Hendrix”, “Old Man” and “Journey Through The Past”, and the unreleased “Sad Movies” and “No One Seems To Know” (according to the internet – and who am I to argue – Young once described this as the sequel to “A Man Needs A Maid”, which is how it’s delivered tonight). I don’t agree with Damien that this presents Neil as naked, as such: the theatrical elements mean that it’s best to treat all this as a conceptual piece about memory, and reconciling yourself with your own prehistory, rather than an unmediated rooting about in a great man’s psyche. But still, it makes for a remarkable spectacle, especially on that terrific version of “A Man Needs A Maid”, as he flits between surprisingly florid piano and a truly spectral synth line. There’s a bit more chat, too, much of it expressing a sort of rueful bewilderment at the crowd’s behaviour. Young tells a story about his granny playing piano in Flin Flon, Manitoba, mention of which gets a cheer. “Oh, a lot of folks in from Flin Flon tonight,” he deadpans. Then, a rambling tale about getting busted at the Isle Of Wight festival touches in passing on Joni Mitchell. Much clapping. “That’s cheap,” he observes drolly, “I can get a round of applause just by mentioning people.” The electric set is pretty similar to Edinburgh, too, and the moment when Young faces down the giant light and solos into it, rapturously, during the gargantuan “No Hidden Path” remains a highlight. A couple of caveats here: why does he have to keep playing “The Believer”, a real weak link on “Chrome Dreams II” (bad enough to have been on “Are You Passionate”, almost); and there are times when I miss the full Crazy Horse experience. Certainly, Ben Keith and Rick Rosas play beautifully: there’s a great section of “Down By The River” (magnificent, even though they briefly lose their way somewhere in the middle of it) when Young and Keith shut down the effects and bounce clean, cleaving solos off each other. But generally, Keith and Rosas are discreet figures just beyond Young’s hyperactive maelstrom, and I find myself missing those protean huddles which he goes into with Billy Talbot and Poncho Sampredo. Really, though, picking holes in a gig as great as this seems utterly churlish, when I could be writing about the seething, heavy version of “Mr Soul”, or the gorgeous “Oh, Lonesome Me”, with Keith and Anthony Crawford complementing each other beautifully on piano and organ. Then, finally, there are the encores: “Cinnamon Girl” first, massively expanded by the sort of molten feedback coda that filled “Arc Weld”. A weird painting of a winking dove, with a kind of Hitler fringe, descends from the rafters in the middle of this, and turns out to be concealing another organ. After some confusion as to whether they’re going to keep playing, Keith takes to the organ for a relatively abbreviated, nonetheless ecstatic version of “Like A Hurricane”. Nothing here suggests to me this is in any way a valedictory tour, an emotional victory lap that some critics are painting it as. Rather, it just seems like Young is drawing new energy from his past, finding new ways to present this most exceptional and volatile of songbooks. By the end, he looked like he wanted to play all night. Tonight, maybe he will: Allan will be reporting back tomorrow. ACOUSTIC SET From Hank To Hendrix Ambulance Blues Sad Movies A Man Needs A Maid No One Seems To Know Harvest Journey Through The Past Mellow My Mind Love Art Blues Don't Let It Bring You Down Cowgirl In The Sand Old Man ELECTRIC SET Mr. Soul Dirty Old Man Spirit Road Down By The River Hey Hey, My My Too Far Gone Oh, Lonesome Me The Believer Powderfinger No Hidden Path Cinnamon Girl Like A Hurricane Pic credit: PA Photos

First, a quick pointer to Damien’s review of Neil Young in Edinburgh last night, which sounds like it was a pretty incredible night. All being well, I’m going to the first London show, so I’ll try and file something on Thursday morning. Second: this Spiritualized album. As I somewhat sanctimoniously mention here every week or so, I don’t really like slagging things off on Wild Mercury Sound – I have far too many good records to write about to waste time on negativity, and so on. But so many of you have been badgering me for some kind of response to “Songs In A&E”, I figured I should post something. For a start, I should mention that Spiritualized have been one of my favourite bands over the past 15-odd years. I gave “Lazer Guided Melodies” 9.99 recurring out of 10 in NME, and wrote my first NME cover story on the band circa “Medication”. Through the ‘90s, I probably wrote more purple prose on them than on any other band. I suspect that “Songs In A&E” is going to attract a lot more purple prose – if this isn’t proclaimed as one of the albums of the year in most papers and magazines, I’ll be amazed; plenty of other people at Uncut love it. But it’s not working for me, in general. As we might have guessed from those Acoustic Mainline shows, a lot of stuff here follows that slow-motion gospel and strings pattern, privileging Jason Pierce’s idea of soulfulness. I think a lot of people will be drawn to this, to the way Pierce documents fairly brutally the health issues which have affected him in the past few years: “Think I’ll drink myself into a coma,” is his way of starting the best track here, “Death Take Your Fiddle”. But as I’ve mentioned before, I find myself less and less interested in notions of authenticity; I don’t much care whether a singer is reflecting their genuine pain, or totally faking it, just whether it engages me. His language, his imagery are so familiar now that they’ve lost some of their potency for me: three songs here are called “Soul On Fire”, “I Gotta Fire” and “Sitting On Fire”, which strikes me as repetitive rather than thematically skilful. Plus, Pierce’s cracked voice is foregrounded and exposed on a lot of these songs, as if to point up the honesty of the endeavour. This means that we don’t often get the depth and texture of the best Spiritualized music. There are some interesting nuances to a few of the arrangements here, but these are generally orthodox songs, and I personally miss the drones, the trances, the determinedly linear, meticulous brand of psychedelia. There’s a glimpse of the richness he can still summon up on “Baby I’m Just A Fool”, which builds and builds up more and more detail; a freestyling horn section turn up near the climax, reminiscent of the peaks of “Ladies And Gentlemen. . .” Or towards the end of “The Waves Crash In”, one of his see-sawing reveries that could incorporate a snatch of “Can’t Help Falling In Love” without too much trouble. Perhaps I’ve changed my tastes a little, and Spiritualized haven’t as much. Perhaps if I hadn’t heard everything else Pierce has ever recorded, I’d be amazed by his craft, his elaborate way of working through a bunch of ancient gospel and blues tropes and investing them with new, intensely personal, meaning. The sad thing is, though, I’m kind of bored by this album right now. The most provocative track on “Songs In A&E” is “Death Take Your Fiddle”, where Pierce’s near-death experience informs the music as well as the lyrics: the rattle and wheeze of a respirator seems to provide an essential rhythm behind the song. It’s an eerie and clever trick, and one which is weirdly much more affecting than the explicit details – the “morphine, codeine, whisky” - laid out in the lyrics. Does it make me want to play the record again and again, though? Not really. But you’re going to tell me I’m wrong, right?