Conventional wisdom might have it that 1983’s Trans is an example of a 60s/70s era great lost adrift in the new shiny environs of the 1980s, yet the intervening years have only shown just how on the money Neil Young was here. His use of synthesizers and vocoders might have dismayed fans at the time, not to mention his own band, but as he later revealed, the latter was in fact inspired by his attempts to work on speech therapy with his son who had been born with cerebral palsy and was unable to talk. Young had also become enamored with Kraftwerk and rather than the work of an out-of-date rocker trying out the latest fads, Trans reflects Young’s nuanced understanding and mastering of early electronic music. Moreover, the songs themselves are great, no matter how they were presented. As proved when Young dusted off Trans outtake “If You Got The Love” for his recent acoustic album Before And After. The album’s commercial failure led him to churlishly deliver rockabilly pastiche “Everybody’s Rockin’” in response to label Geffen’s pleas for “a rock and roll album,” but it remains one of his most audacious, and undervalued, moves.

– Chris Catchpole