“I’M deep inside myself, but I’ll get out somehow”, sang Neil Young on his classic 1975 album On The Beach and, yes, Young has been a little less introspective lately.

Living With War, a most brutal and effective attack on Bush and Blair’s horror show in Iraq, externalised many of his churning emotions, while Fork In The Road was a timely attack on the greed poisoning life on both sides of the Atlantic and Le Noise was an interesting, if not always successful, exploration of Young’s relationship with his guitar.

Americana, in which our hero is reunited with the legendary Crazy Horse for the first time in nine years, is something else again. Instead of a searing journey into the very heart of the American dream like On The Beach or Tonight’s The Night, it is a canter through American history, with imaginative reinterpretations of traditional American folk songs.

They don’t all work. For example, the mournful Clementine is not best suited to the wailing, surging guitar so beloved of Crazy Horse, while the band, try as they might, struggle to overcome the repetitive structure of murder ballads such as Tom Dula and Gallows Pole. God Save The Queen, the one-time American national anthem rather than the Sex Pistols’ subversive tirade, is a curio – but nothing more. Still, there are some gems. Woody Guthrie’s seminal This Land Is Your Land, which so inspired Bob Dylan, is absolutely magnificent, with Young’s urgent, anguished vocals underpinning Guthrie’s metaphorical call to arms, whilst the atmospheric Travel On is in the finest tradition of stories of the road.

No one would claim that Americana is classic Neil Young, but his engaging trip through American history, the fertile territory so beloved of The Band and mid-term The Grateful Dead, is an intriguing chapter in an astonishing career.