NEIL YOUNG, Archives Vol 1 Warners★★★

And so we finally have it. After years of will-he-won’t-he and what-will-it-be conjecture, Neil Young has released the first volume of his archives project. And as monumental projects go, this is a humdinger. In his favoured expensive Blu-ray format (“I think it rocks”), there are 10 discs, the same number in DVD format and only eight on CD. This volume only brings him up to 1972, so if he follows with a disc for each year the project could total 50 discs.

This volume tells the musical story of the quiet, young star from the backwaters of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and his journey to California, then the epicentre of rock. We hear the jangling pop of The Squires before he moves to the west coast, where he joins up with Stephen Stills in Buffalo Springfield, before reaching for the stars with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. We also get what some consider the highlight of his solo career – the beginning – with After the Goldrushand Harvest, and a remarkable live concert with Crazy Horse, with whom he had recorded another key album, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, in 1969.

That it was a hugely exciting time is well conveyed. There are plenty of out-takes, and alternate versions of key songs – such as Sugar Mountain– but it is something of a trial wading through the DVDs, as navigation is poor. Each DVD has a basic music layer with links to documents (typically press reports, images or original lyric sheets), but moving between these layers is not as intuitive as it should be. And while the DVD sound reproduction is strikingly good, the standard image of an amplifier or record player pales after the first hour or six. I would have expected more video, though there is a remarkable clip from an open-air CSNY concert at Big Sur in California. In addition, archive sets such as Live at Massey Hall 1971 and the movie Journey Through the Past have already been released.

But really, this project is for the anoraks alone, who, sadly, include me.