For Fans of Neil Young

Everyone gets handed Harvest first, and it is a great record, but it can mislead new listeners into thinking Young is primarily a gentle acoustic balladeer. Rust Never Sleeps from 1979 is the better entry point precisely because it holds both sides in one place: side one is quiet and stark, side two is an extended electric assault. The closing track, 'Hey Hey, My My', makes the whole argument in four minutes. After that record, you know who you are dealing with.

Tonight's the Night was recorded in 1973 after two of Young's associates died of heroin overdoses, and it sounds like it. The playing is loose and sometimes wrong. The mood never lifts. Young made it as an act of mourning, not as a commercial record, and Reprise did not want to release it. It sat in a vault for two years. When it finally came out, critics did not know what to do with it. Now it is regarded as one of the rawest and most emotionally honest rock records ever made. It rewards the patience the first few listens require.

Martin Scorsese filmed The Band's 1976 farewell concert with the kind of camera attention usually reserved for narrative features, and the result changed what a concert film could be. For Young fans it is also simply a great place to watch him perform alongside peers of equal stature. His cameo is brief and slightly chaotic, which is to say it is entirely in character. If you have never seen it, this is where the music documentary tradition begins.

The comparison sounds odd until you sit with it. McCarthy's prose is stripped to the bone and then something unexpected emerges from that austerity, violent and beautiful and relentless. His landscapes feel morally weighted, the land itself making a judgment. Young's guitar solos work the same way: spare enough that each note costs something, long enough that the feeling has nowhere to hide. Blood Meridian and The Road both have the same unsparing quality as Tonight's the Night. Start with The Road if you want the entry point that is hardest to put down.