Reinventing himself as a bluesman named Shakey Deal, Neil Young commemorated his vow renewal with Reprise with a new band and a new attitude. Complete with a 6-piece horn section, This Note’s For You would garner more acclaim — and notoriety — for its title track’s anti-corporate message and subsequent Julien Temple-directed music video than for anything else on this difficult but undervalued album. Though the flat recording does Shakey Deal and his band no great favors, a handful of tunes cut through: The churning juke joint nod-out that is “Coupe De Ville” recalls the wall-gazing desperation of On The Beach; the soft rock horns on the lonesome-sounding “Twilight” are deliciously incongruent with Shakey’s stinging, scalding-tube guitar tone; and “Can’t Believe You’re Lyin'” is a scarecrow of a song that imagines a Narcotics, Anonymous meeting disrupted by an impromptu concert by Robert Jr Lockwood. All the while, The Bluenotes — actually a random assortment of allies, studio hacks and Neil regulars — provide crests of just enough airbrushed nightclub schmaltz for their zooted leader to surf over. MTV initially banned Temple’s controversial music video, then honored it with a Music Video Of The Year award several months later, foreshadowing the kind of fair-weather corporate revisionism Wilco would famously endure at the hands of their label over a decade later. This Note’s For You is a good album, and one of Neil’s most unfairly maligned.