Upon learning Neil Young was in Austin, a colleague texted me the following: “Wimpy Neil or Loud Neil?” (Note: wimpy is not a knock; he simply meant acoustic.)

As it turned out, both showed up at Bass Concert Hall Saturday night. In front of an occasionally entirely too enthusiastic crowd — there’s nothing louder and more entitled-sounding than let’s-call-them-longtime fans who’ve paid three figures for a ticket — Young alternated between new songs and old, guitar and keyboards, acoustic strum and electric fire.

Young’s hand-picked opener was a hero of his, a Scottish gentleman named Bert Jansch. Though well known in his own country and among guitar connoisseurs, Jasnch is a cult figure at best in the States, the co-founder of the British folk rock outfit the Pentangle and a man Young once called the Jimi Hendrix of acoustic guitar. Indeed he is - Jansch’s clawhammer-style picking creates spun-glass melodies, complicated and gorgeous, weaving together American blues and Anglo-Saxon folk. Jansch was one of the folk feast’s founders - his cult is devout for a reason.

But just as Jansch’s music was glorious in its fluid complexity, Young’s songs are extraordinary for their simplicity.

Opening with a trio of acoustic numbers, Young laid out his terms: rock music is eternal (“My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)”) as is longing (“Tell Me Why”) especially when combined with memory and beauty (“Helpless”).

He ratcheted up the sound on three new songs “You Never Call,” (Never thought we’d see the day when a Young song included the line “you send me a link,” but, well, here we are), “Peaceful Valley” and “Love and War” (his eternal topics), the bass string of his pickup-amplified acoustic bouncing around the room.

Most galvanizing were the electric numbers, classics such as “Down By the River” and the smashing “Cortez the Killer” reduced to their sapre, howling essence, raw like a fresh wound - “River” has rarely sounded sadder, “Cortez” more moving. The rarity “The Hitchhiker” stood stark and weird, a dark tale of drugs and more drugs.

“Ohio” was a crowd-pleaser, while “Sign of Love” and the encore-closing “Walk With Me” suggested Young has found next contexts and shapes for the gloriously unholy noises he can get out of his beloved guitar Old Black and it’s mate, the white Falcon, as if the feedback and fury from the “Arc/Weld” live era were shaped into rough songs. Elsewhere he moved to a pump organ for “After the Gold Rush” and to the piano for the light “Leia”. You think you’ve seen it all from the guy and he finds another ace in the deck. Wimpy? Loud? Like the man once said, it’s all one song.

:: statesman.com/blogs/