Neil Young - Mystery Train (2001)

AllMusic Review by Steve Leggett
Mystery Train draws tracks from Neil Young's Geffen years, including selections from Trans (1983), Everybody's Rockin' (1983), Old Ways (1985), and the late rarities CD that uses lost tracks from this time period, Lucky Thirteen (1993). This, of course, was the era in which Geffen sued Young for not putting out albums that sounded enough like Neil Young, a rather ridiculous premise given Young's oft-noted tendency to change stylistic directions at the drop of a guitar pick, sometimes even in mid-tour. What is immediately apparent upon listening to this amazingly cohesive compilation is how much it sounds like vintage Neil Young from start to finish, and all these years later it is a little hard to understand what all the fuss was about. True, the above albums were a bit inconsistent (but this is Neil Young, remember, and being consistent and doing what is expected have never exactly been his M.O.), so casual listeners may want to seek out this anthology in order to get a single-disc overview of his really not so controversial (at least in retrospect) mid-'80s work.