Any project in the works for two decades is bound to generate its fair share of myths and so it is with Neil Young’s Archives, a series of a multi-disc box sets chronicling Young’s history. Originally envisioned in the late ’80s as a Decade II, the project quickly mutated into a monster covering every little corner of Neil’s career. With its escalation came delays, so many that it sometimes seemed that the project never really existed; it was just a shared fantasy between Neil and his faithful. During that long, long wait, fans held tight to the idea that Archives was a clearinghouse of rarities similar to Bob Dylan’s The Bootleg Series, a treasure trove of unreleased songs and epochal live performances that would trump whatever bootleggers had to offer. While rare and unheard music is certainly a key part of Archives, particularly on the first disc covering the pre-history of 1963-1965, viewing this project as merely a CD box set is wildly misleading. Neil Young has designed Archives as nothing less than an immersive multimedia autobiography, an interactive experience where the music, text, video, and pictures feed off each other, creating a virtual journey through Neil’s past.

Because this is a biography, Archives, Vol. 1 winds up relying very heavily on previously released recordings, containing almost all of Neil Young, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After the Gold Rush, and Harvest, key Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young cuts, and the previously released archival live albums Live at the Fillmore East 1970 and Live at Massey Hall 1971. Such a large chunk of familiar material is bound to disappoint any listener expecting Archives to be a rarities-only set, forgetting that its origin was as a sequel to Decade, the triple-LP set that mixed up hits with unreleased tunes. Archives follows a similar blueprint, excavating many rare gems — some, like “Bad Fog of Loneliness” quite familiar to bootleggers; some, like an extraordinary “Dance Dance Dance” cut with Graham Nash, not — and placing them neatly alongside his well-known jewels, so the end effect isn’t a rush of discovery but ongoing quiet revelation, an impression underpinned by the set’s leisurely pace.

The entire Archives is designed to trace Neil’s evolution, to explain how his dead ends were really detours and how his mood swings weren’t all that wild; it preserves Young’s history as he perceived it. To that end, the DVD and especially BluRay editions of the set are essential to understanding both the project and Neil himself, so much so that the CD edition feels almost like an afterthought, a skimming of the surface of a deep lake. Often, Young delayed Archives due to the limits of technology, a claim that seemed no more than an excuse to keep the project incomplete, but Archives in its BluRay incarnation lives up to all of Neil’s promises over the years, coming close to collecting everything — lyrics, press, artwork, TV performances, doodles, scraps of every sort — in one place, letting users linger for as long as they’d like in a specific era. Surely, the sound quality on BluRay is extraordinary — the music leaps out of the speakers yet never sounds overly clean, digital, or modern — but it’s the interactive nature of the set that impresses most. While the DVD set also is complexly interactive, BluRay is designed to be continually updated via the Internet, so Young can add songs and videos whenever he wants, placing the new material as a virtual pushpin on each disc’s time line. Acting as a supplement to the text biographies on each disc — the biography only covering the years on the disc — the time line places Young’s evolution on a broader scale and is illuminated by this extra material, such as a downright thrilling CSNY performance of “Down by the River” on ABC-TV, but this is merely a teaser for the main event: the virtual filing cabinet, where every song on the set has its own folder bulging with handwritten lyrics, press clips, photos, snippets of in-concert introductions, alternate takes — the list is almost endless and it’s always different, so it’s easy to flip back to a song and discover a bunch of information you missed the first time around. Add to this, there are an untold number of Easter eggs, sometimes housing the best stuff here, such as videos of Young combing through the archives and reminiscing in 1997, or a 15-minute film clip of Young discovering a CSNY bootleg while record shopping in the early ’70s and then taking it from the store.

This level of detail may suggest the one serious flaw in Archives: it cannot be taken casually. It demands complete, undivided attention, requiring users to dig as deep as they’d like, and it’s no stretch to say that it could take a week or two to discover everything here. Also, the set comes so tantalizingly close to being complete, it’s a major irritation to have one song lopped off of each the albums; surely, the extra storage space on DVD and BluRay could have allowed for complete runs of Everybody, Gold Rush, and Harvest. But really, these complaints feel churlish when faced with a box that is an embarrassment of riches, offering so much more than anybody could have imagined during that long, long wait. Not only was the wait worth it, Archives feels like it was 20 years in the making. It’s an extraordinary work that redefines what an autobiography can be.

Weezer fans can now weather those long, cold months between albums by sporting one of the band’s custom-branded Snuggies. Rivers Cuomo has confirmed rumors that the band will be designing its own brand of sleeved blankets, with the band’s name emblazoned across the front. “The people at Snuggie are doing it with us and promoting it with us,” he told Rolling Stone. “It’s a totally legit Snuggie.” Well, as long it’s legit… [RollingStone.com]

Discovery, the collaborative side project of Ra Ra Riot vocalist Wes Miles and Vampire Weekend keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij, will unveil its debut album in early July. What does the product of two buzz-generating NYC bands sound like? Fractured club anthems and druggy keyboard workouts, apparently. [PasteMagazine.com]

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The influence of Franz Joseph Haydn in the Classical era and beyond should not be underestimated. To many, he perfected the structure of the sonata, the symphony, and the string quartet, laying the foundations for nearly all subsequent composers who write in those forms. He lived a long and productive life, seeing his own fame and the appreciation of his talents spread throughout Europe. Haydn died on May 31, 1809, in his sleep, at his home in Vienna.

Both Vienna and Hungary are celebrating the Haydn anniversary with special events, exhibitions, and tours. For information, click here and here. The BBC has collected a few factoids and anecdotes about Haydn, also.

In the meanwhile, here are a few of our editors’ choices for listening to Haydn:

Haydn: Symphonies Nos. 31 “Hornsignal” & 45 “Farewell”
Haydn’s Symphony No. 31 is known as the “Hornsignal” from its prominent horn parts in the first and last movements. Written in anticipation of palace-warming festivities at the Eszterháza estate, the symphony has a celebratory air in its bold fanfares and hunting calls. Haydn’s originality is evident not only in his clever motivic development of these ideas, but also in his placement of the horn pairs at a distance from each other. Haydn’s experimentation was unusual for its time, but it shows some of the freedom he enjoyed as Prince Nicholas’ court composer. The Symphony No. 45, dubbed “Farewell” from the musicians’ calculated exits in the closing Adagio, is darker in tone than the previous work. Influenced by the Sturm und Drang movement of the mid-18th century — the first flowering of what would later become Romanticism — the symphony is melancholy and more dramatic than might be expected from Haydn’s usually sunny output. Sir Charles Mackerras has achieved a pleasant compromise between conventional and historical approaches in playing these Classical works. Read the rest of the review here.

Orchestra of St. Luke’s; Sir Charles Mackerras, cond. – Symphony No. 45 “Farewell” – Finale: Presto. Adagio

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Haydn: The “Paris” Symphonies, Nos. 82-87
Over many decades, founder Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the early music ensemble Concentus Musicus Wien have maintained an exemplary musical relationship that has yielded wonderful results in the Baroque and Classical fields, particularly in their strongly characterized and idiomatic performances of music by Mozart and Haydn. This triple-disc collection of Haydn’s marvelous “Paris” Symphonies, Nos. 82-87, is topnotch, for it displays the musicians’ high standards in all aspects of historical scholarship and period performance practice, and offers interpretations that are admirable for their freshness, good humor, and zest. Read the rest of the review here.
 
Concentus Musicus Wien; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond. – Symphony No. 82, “The Bear,” – I. Vivace assai

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Haydn: Symphonies 68, 93-104
Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra have a knack for delivering something with which many other orchestras and conductors struggle. That is, to produce a box set that has the ability to maintain a listener’s interest from disc one to, in this case, disc five. Like their cycle of the Mozart and Schubert symphonies, this set of the late Haydn symphonies is a treat from start to finish. Although Haydn’s symphonies do not display the dramatic changes from one symphony to the next that a listener might expect when listening to a cycle of the Beethoven or Mahler symphonies, Harnoncourt and the RCO play with ample exuberance, energy, and minute attention to detail so as to make every note and phrase as fresh as the last. Read the rest of the review here.

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor – Symphony No. 94 “Surprise” – Andante

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Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond. – Symphony No. 103 “Drumroll” – Finale: Allegro con spirito

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Haydn: Violoncello Concertos in C and D major
Collectors and neophytes will both delight in this recording of the two Haydn cello concertos by cellist Pieter Wispelwey joined by the period instrument ensemble Florilegium. To call these performances energetic would be grossly understating the charisma, verve, and dynamism that are imbued into these popular works. Wispelwey’s execution is graceful and seemingly effortless. The third movement of the C major concerto is incredibly fast and exciting; the lightness of the period instruments makes it sound all the more shimmering and exhilarating. Read the rest of the review here.

Pieter Wispelwey – Cello Concerto in C major, Hob. 7b:1 – Allegro molto

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Haydn: String Quartets Op. 33 Nos. 3, 5 & 6
In their survey of Haydn’s string quartets for ASV, the Lindsays have set about the business of restoring these Classical masterpieces to their proper place in the repertoire, with all their brilliant wit and brusqueness intact, and without undue sweetening or romanticizing. The point, it seems clear, is to bring Haydn out from under the familiar shadows of Mozart and Beethoven, and to render his quartets as the true models of quartet writing, not as light Rococo divertissements or tamer antecedents of greater works. The Lindsays are sharp in their characterizations of Op. 33, Nos. 3, 5, and 6, and their lean textures, crisp articulation, transparent repartee, and pungent attacks distinguish these performances from more commercially pretty or polished versions. Read the rest of the review here.

The Lindsays – String Quartet in G major, Op. 33/5 – Vivace assai

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Haydn: String Quartets, Opp. 64/5 “Lark”, 76/2 “Fifths”, 77/1 “Lobkowitz”
Haydn is often referred to as the Father of the String Quartet, and rightfully so. When he began composing his first complete sets of string quartets in 1771, he was already a master of the form without equal and even his early examples in the genre demonstrate an unequaled maturity and sophistication in the new form. Twenty years later, Haydn was still highly active composing quartets, and the final sets that he composed in the 1790s are stunning examples of how Haydn brought the string quartet in terms of depth of melody, independence of parts, and command of texture. The three quartets heard on this Harmonia Mundi disc are some of the most popular and often performed works of this later period. The relatively young Jerusalem Quartet (founded in 1993) gives listeners an exemplary performance worthy of any collection. Gone are the days when Haydn was treated like a delicate, fragile flower. The members of the Jerusalem Quartet play with remarkable intensity and a big, meaty sound. Read the rest of the review here.

Jerusalem Quartet – String Quartet in D minor, Op. 76/2 “Fifths” – Allegro

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Haydn: The Seven Last Words
An extraordinary disc in every way, this release from Deutsche Grammophon presents a new edition of a profound masterpiece, wonderfully performed by a great string quartet in splendid, lifelike sound. Composed for Good Friday services, Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Our Savior on the Cross is, in its most familiar version, a sequence of seven slow sonatas with an introduction and a concluding fast movement. On this recording, however, an additional movement is borrowed from Haydn’s later choral adaptation, and appears as the Largo e cantabile introduction to the Sonata V. Read the rest of the review here.

Emerson Quartet – The Seven Last Words – Introduzione II – Largo e cantabile

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Joseph Haydn: Five Keyboard Sonatas on a Schanz Fortepiano
There is nothing not to like about this disc of Haydn sonatas from Malcolm Bilson. The keyboard music of Haydn is often ignored, in favor of that of Mozart and Beethoven, but the works here demonstrate that Haydn was the master of the sonata form, using the same structural principles even in some of the slow movements. Bilson begins his program with the Sonata in C major, Hob. 16:50, one of Haydn’s best. It transcends the bounds of melody and accompaniment to use both hands more equally, more like how Haydn would use different orchestra sections to complement each other. The other sonatas here are less sophisticated technically, obviously meant for students. Their appeal lies in the directness of feeling, with emotions that are easy for students to express and in which expert performers such as Bilson can find greater depth. Read the rest of the review here.

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This week we try to recover from our big Sweet 16 bash with a wide range of jams from all over the world, but mostly from Philadelphia for some reason. Weird. Anyhow, we have a debut from a former Pipette who got out while the getting was good, some rock/rap fusion that actually works, Finnish shoegazers, raw Jamaican dancehall and some good old dependable new wave pop from the UK. Lots of stuff to explore and crush on. I’m sure Walter would have loved them all.

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Depeche Mode’s David Gahan is recovering from severe gastroenteritis and surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his bladder. Though the band have postponed more tour dates, including their London, Dusseldorf and Hamburg stops, they will resume their “Tour of the Universe” in Leipzig on June 8. [NME.com]

Phil Spector’s lawyer is seeking a reduced sentence for the producer, who was convicted of second-degree murder in the 2003 shooting death of Lana Clarkson. Spector’s attorney asked for his sentence to be be 18 years to life in prison, shortening the sentencing enhancement to three years, instead of the four requested by the Deputy District Attorney. Spector is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday; his legal team is also planning to appeal the conviction. [Billboard.com]

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T.I. has begun serving a year-long prison sentence after his conviction over weapons charges. The rapper arrived late yesterday at an Arkansas prison, where he will remain for the entirety of 2009. [NYDailyNews.com]

AT&T may have swayed the American Idol competition in favor of Kris Allen. The telecommunications giant is a major sponsor of the show and, according to some sources, provided free phones and lessons on block-voting at parties organized by Allen supporters. [NYTimes.com]

As predicted, Eminem topped the album charts with his latest release, Relapse. The album has already sold well over 600,000 copies and marks the Detroit-rapper’s fifth consecutive number one album, a feat shared by the lonely likes of U2, Metallica, and the Dave Matthews Band. [RollingStone.com]

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Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
It’s hard to decide what the most impressive thing about Veckatimest is: Grizzly Bear’s ambition, which is seemingly boundless, or the fact that this boundless ambition never eclipses these songs. The band already made such an impressive leap from Horn of Plenty to Yellow House that an album to catch their breath would have been understandable. However, Grizzly Bear are most comfortable when they’re challenging themselves, and Veckatimest delivers everything that Yellow House did and more.

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