Reeling from the death of David Briggs, his foil, frequent producer and close friend of 27 years, Neil rushed out Broken Arrow, an album that sounds more compulsory and half-assed with each passing year. Though over half the tunes exceed five minutes, it’s nevertheless difficult to imagine these perfunctory plods exciting fans of Crazy Horse’s more adventurous jamming. Even worse is a cover of Jimmy Reed’s blues classic “Baby What You Want Me To Do,” included here in such gauzy low fidelity it would send even Bob Pollard scurrying for the Hear-Os. The pensive and acoustic “Music Arcade” is the only saving grace, helping the rest of this bad medicine go down. Perhaps Neil was preoccupied: his soundtrack to the Jim Jarmusch surreal western Dead Man had been released just five months earlier. This may excuse any infractions committed by the largely forgettable Broken Arrow: Dead Man, though an outlier inappropriate for inclusion on a list ranking proper studio albums, remains the more crucial 1996 Neil Young release, containing noisy guitar improvisations that sound like Six Organs of Admittance impersonating Bill Frisell.