Neil remains the only Sixties artist nobody calls burnt-out or irrelevant.

"Decade," his remarkably comprehensive new greatest-hits collection, demonstrates that what many of us mistook for profound change over time was nothing of the sort, but simply a case of our inability to see the total artist, rather than just the facets, as the years went by. There's something here for almost everybody…. If you missed it on "Zuma," "Decade" contains what is in my opinion Neil's masterpiece, Cortez the Killer, a mysterious, almost epic song that evokes visions of ancient empires and raises startling questions about male/female relationships.

All in all, this is a superb overview of the work of an artist who at his best makes most of his contemporaries sound faintly puerile by comparison, and at his worst is still an endearing foul-up.

Steve Simels, "Popular Discs and Tapes: 'Decade'," in Stereo Review (copyright...