Neil Young on form 2005

Times take on the new album: "a unified theory of Neil"

CRITIC'S CHOICE

Because He's Still Young at Heart

For 30 years, it's been the same question: Which Neil? The lumber-shredding, screeching Canadian eagle of vengeance? The willfully weird but kind of dull experimenter? The acoustic guy? This time it's just Good Neil. Neil Young, 59, started making Prairie Wind, out Sept. 27, his (lordy) 31st album, a week before he had brain surgery--a nice p.r. detail but also a legit reason for him to think about mortality and drift back to his days on the Canadian steppe. There's politics and religion too, as well as some of Nashville's best musicians, though it's not really a country album. It's more a unified theory of Neil, and his timing couldn't be better. --J.T.