Young, at 68, still sounds as has since the very beginning: His voice is high, sweet, gentle, cracked like soft leather even when snarling through a version of “Ohio” nearly marred by some audience members’ clumsy clapalong. The man who roars when riding a Crazy Horse sings like an angel when seated behind one of his two pianos or strumming one of the eight guitars with which he surrounded himself. His take on Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind,” now a set regular, rescues it from the soft-rock abyss; it sounds like one of Young’s own offerings. So too does his version of Phil Ochs’ “Changes,” which Young said Thursday night served as the template for much of his own work.

He was actually in a merry mood for most of the night. Young told elliptical tales about catching snapping turtles in the old mill stream when he was 5. He shared a story about Pete Seeger and an unnamed folk singer booed off the Carnegie Hall stage for wearing a gold lamé jacket.

Richard Wilonsky, Dallas Morning News (“Neil Young gave his ‘Heart’ and ‘Soul’ Thursday, and some folks just gave him a hard time”), 4/18/14

Wow, who could that gold lamé jacket-wearing singer have been?