The best folk album of Neil Young's career came not in 1970, not in 1972 or '78, not back when people under the age of 30 could still tell you all about Neil Young, but in 1993, ironically released exactly 20 years after an album called Time Fades Away. Oh, no, it sure doesn't, Neil. Perhaps time seemed to be fading away in the '80s, but it all seems to represent the very same glorious moment here on this pristine, immaculately produced folk reminiscence, which still stands as the best MTV Unplugged album of them all.

This album's brilliance is manifest in the wealth of successfully executed contemporary renditions of old classics and "fazed cookies," as the Rolling Stones once put it. Neil breathes fresh electricity into songs some 30 years old, such as "Old Laughing Lady," featured in a much less affecting form on his late-'60s debut record; the obscure "Transformer Man" from 1982's baffling electronic experiment, Trans, sounds like one of Neil's most tactful pieces in its new acoustic skin; "Like A Hurricane" is resurrected in all its magnificence, as Neil beats it out of an organ that bellows like a hungry lion. It is perhaps the album's most unforgettable moment, though there are many here.

"Harvest Moon" sounds even fresher than its studio counterparts in this live setting, and "Needle & the Damage Done" reminds all of us as to why Neil Young's name is graven on the hearts of millions. This is not an album, it is a timeless epic, a folk festival that should be experienced in every household.