No stranger to oddball albums, Young outdoes himself on this one. It’s named after an unreleased Young album from the ’70s and opens with three unreleased songs from the following decade, followed by seven songs of more recent vintage. It runs more than an hour, half of which is taken up by just two songs.
Fortunately, the long songs are the album’s standouts by a wide margin. Ordinary People , nearly 20 years in the can, overlays seismic slabs of guitar with a catchy horn riff to explore economic exploitation over 18 minutes, and — despite anachronisms such as “the Lee Iacocca people” — is as pertinent as it ever was. The 14-minute No Hidden Path follows the patented Youngian Cowgirl in the Sand/Down by the River epic blueprint to create an entrancing guitar showcase.
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