Young opened with a somber "My My, Hey Hey (Out Of the Blue)" that braced everyone in their seats. What first struck Aftermath was the sound of Young's voice enveloping in the room. Iconic voices slay us, and to hear his in the same room you are breathing air was almost religious. You hear that voice on classic-rock radio and in your car or headphones at your most washed-out and morose. We compare to hearing the voice of dead relatives on video or tape after they have passed, and how it chills and warms you at the same time.
The first new song of the night was "You Never Call," a letter to friend who has deceased. As he delved into the song, we started getting echoes of the chaos in Dylan's LP Time Out Of Mind. The character left standing as everyone else takes flight into eternity and you are left wandering aimless, dealing with your own mortal ends. The next two songs, "Peaceful Valley" and "Love and War" were also still under construction. The latter was a scorched earth look back on his life, surveying the two topics that he was trafficked in almost exclusively since his start on the same back streets of Toronto he mentioned. Young has come to the resolution that even though he speaks about both, he still doesn't know what he's saying. Artists rarely get the chance to admit in their twilight that the jury is still out the things they professed earlier in life - if they are even lucky enough to get a proper twilight.