Near the midpoint of his sprawling, deeply satisfying show at Madison Square Garden on Monday night, Neil Young asked a simple question: “Where did all the money go?” He sang this line and repeated it, for emphasis or symmetry. And a few moments later he issued variations on the wording — “Where did all the cash flow?/Where did all the revenue stream?” — that confirmed that it wasn’t such a simple question after all.
Mr. Young and his Electric Band were kicking around a tune that made its debut recently, on another stop of the tour. Fans have taken to calling it “Cough Up the Bucks,” after its spoken refrain, though the title could double as a comment on ticket prices. It was one of more than half a dozen new songs in the show, and not remotely a good one. But it fell in line with a Neil Young tradition: the rushed-to-assembly, current-event song, created more for blunt efficiency than for subtlety or even style.
At 63 Mr. Young is a figure of blunt efficiency himself, and a man comfortable with his own contradictions. Here in the first of two tour-ending New York shows, he presented himself not only as a stubbornly craggy survivor but also as an avid early adapter, a holdout hippie idealist, an evenhanded pragmatist and a sharp-eyed cynic.
And that was just in the new stuff, which came with a disclaimer. “We’re auditioning for our old record company,” Mr. Young said after playing four unreleased pieces in a row, including “Light a Candle,” a hymn for the hopeful; “Fuel Line,” a paean to his electric-biodiesel car; and “Hit the Road and Go to Town,” exactly what it sounds like.
“So when you hear those new songs,” he prodded, “you make a lot of noise whether you like ’em or not, O.K.?” (He used saltier language, if only slightly.)
There were some obliging cheers. But biodiesel innovation wasn’t exactly at the top of the crowd’s agenda. The good news, then, was old news: songs from across Mr. Young’s career, with an occasional emphasis on the 1970s. “Heart of Gold” preceded “Old Man,” and both found Mr. Young singing beautifully, against a familiar, rustic backdrop distinguished by Ben Keith’s steel guitar playing.
There were other acoustic moments, most of them starker. For “Mother Earth (Natural Anthem),” Mr. Young backed himself on harmonica and pipe organ, underscoring both the solemnity and the simplicity of his message. He played his heartbreaking lament “The Needle and the Damage Done” alone with a guitar, the same format as on his new archival release, “Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968” (Reprise).
The show’s core, though, had more to do with heaving momentum, bruising riffs and brazen but unhurried guitar solos. Mr. Young made this output count, directing large reserves of energy through his guitars, including the 1953 Gibson Les Paul he calls Old Black. He stretched out at every appropriate juncture: with rampaging ease on “Cowgirl in the Sand” and then with anxious fire on the closer, “Rockin’ in the Free World.” His ramble through “Cortez the Killer” was a potent manifesto of slow-burn suspense.
There were traces of Mr. Young’s influence in the work of Nels Cline, the lead guitarist and chief galvanizing agent of Wilco, which played a solid but unimaginative opening set. The other opener, Everest, a five-piece from Los Angeles, went more for Mr. Young’s classic band sound, trying to pair frayed-edge vulnerability with a vintage haze.
They were no match for Mr. Young and crew: Mr. Keith, the bassist Rick Rosas, the keyboardist-guitarist Anthony Crawford and especially the drummer Chad Cromwell, whose time feel suggested the perfect blend of slouch and surge. Mr. Crawford sang background vocals with Pegi Young, Mr. Young’s wife, sounding strong on standards like “Cinnamon Girl” and fine on chugging new fare like “When Worlds Collide.”
That tune came after something known to Mr. Young’s more up-to-date fans as “Just Singing a Song Won’t Change the World.” On the surface it was an ode to skepticism, even a kind of disavowal. But on a deeper level it felt like a transfer of power from artist to audience.
“You can drive my car,” Mr. Young sang generously. “Feel how it rolls.”
