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The opening minutes of Psychedelic Pill, the second of two albums Neil Young has released this year with Crazy Horse after their near decade-long absence, find the band in rediscovery. It’s a fine joke, a testament to the singer’s unwillingness to conform to expectation, that Young begins his much-anticipated record of Crazy Horse originals with an acoustic guitar. “I’m driftin’ back,” Young sings in a woozy haze, as if he’s about to enter a dream.
And then he does. Crazy Horse eventually appears out of nowhere, in a slow fade-in, and their introduction to the album feels like a flashback. Young gets the point across well enough: when he plays with The Horse, he is taken to another world. He goes somewhere else.