Bluenote Café


Bluenote Café is a live album by Canadian / American singer-songwriter Neil Young, released on November 13, 2015, on Reprise. The album is volume eleven in Young's Archives Performance Series, and features performances from Young's 1987–88 American tours with his then-backing band, The Bluenotes, with whom he recorded his seventeenth studio album, This Note's for You.
Aside from live versions of This Note's for You songs, the album features a number of songs that weren't released at the time; "Welcome to the Big Room", "Hello Lonely Woman", "Bad News Comes to Town", "Crime of the Heart" and "Doghouse" make their first appearances on any official Neil Young release. Two of the album's tracks, "This Note's for You" and "Ain't It the Truth," previously appeared on the compilation album Lucky Thirteen.

Critical reception

The album received positive reviews, and holds a score of 75 out of 100 on Metacritic, indicating "generally favourable reviews". Chris Gerard of PopMatters gave the album nine stars out of ten, stating: "Bluenote Café is essential Neil Young, further evidence that Young's 80s work has more value than many would expect or admit." Conversely, in a brief negative review, Daniel Sylvester of Exclaim! wrote that "even die-hard fans will find this as nothing more than a masochistic curiosity." In a three-star review, Will Hermes of Rolling Stone said that " live recordings from the late Eighties illuminate and redeem one of Neil Young's stranger eras". In a highly positive four-and-a-half-star review, Hal Horowitz of American Songwriter wrote that "even diehard Neil Young fans may not fully appreciate this offshoot in his bulging catalog. But this remarkably vibrant and immediate live compilation shows that Young took this side road very seriously and it was more than just a forgettable, momentary quirk in his diverse and winding career."

Track listing

;Disc 1
  1. "Welcome to the Big Room" – 7:31
  2. "Don't Take Your Love Away From Me" – 9:30
  3. "This Note's for You" – 5:24
  4. "Ten Men Workin'" – 8:27
  5. "Life in the City" – 3:55
  6. "Hello Lonely Woman" – 4:46
  7. "Soul of a Woman" – 5:57
  8. "Married Man" – 3:07
  9. "Bad News Comes to Town" – 8:00
  10. "Ain't It the Truth" – 7:30
  11. "One Thing" – 6:41
  12. "Twilight" – 8:03
;Disc 2
  2. "I'm Goin'" – 5:35
  3. "Ordinary People" – 12:50
  4. "Crime in the City" – 7:22
  5. "Crime of the Heart" – 5:36
  6. "Welcome Rap" – 0:36
  7. "Doghouse" – 4:08
  8. "Fool for Your Love" – 4:20
  9. "Encore Rap" – 0:25
  10. "On the Way Home" – 3:01
  11. "Sunny Inside" – 3:44
  12. "Tonight's the Night" – 19:26

    Personnel