Weld (1991)

Neil Young is generally not one to look back, which makes Weld especially disappointing. Recorded on his 1991 tour, the two-CD set finds Young and Crazy Horse — his long-suffering backup band — reprising songs from their 1990 album Ragged Glory plus a bunch of weatherworn Young standards. Unfortunately, Crazy Horse have only one style — the lumbering thud — so the Glory songs sound identical to the studio versions, and war-horses like ''Hey Hey, My My'' and ''Like a Hurricane'' sound exactly the way they did on the Young-Crazy Horse 1979 concert album Live Rust. The point may be to prove that Young and the boys can still raise a ruckus onstage. That's fine, but couldn't they have chosen a fresher batch of songs (say, from Young's often underrated '80s records)? Fans can revel in Young's corrosive solos, an electric version of ''Crime in the City,'' and (on Arc Weld, a limited-edition, three-CD version of this album) 35 perverse extra minutes of instrumental feedback. But Weld is mainly for fans of guitar freak-outs and, alas, nostalgia. B-