After Neil Young’s wife Pegi concluded her opening set, while the stage crew arranged a myriad of guitars in a circle in the middle of the Constitution Hall stage, a portly man in a bright red blazer and straw hat worked on a painting of a horse towards the back of the stage. Later on, he came back to paint the words “The Loner” in the top right corner, and placed it on an easel right up front to introduce the first song of Neil's second set. He continued the trend with each following song, bringing a new painting up with the title of the song just before the band launched into it. Seemed a bit bizarre to many of us, I’m sure, but really it was just a good example of Young doing something that sounds pretty cool to him but that no one else really gets.

Of course, it’s well-documented that Neil’s hard to get a handle on. Hell, a simple look back at his most recent recorded work can tell you that, running the gamut from introspective country-folk to romantic R&B tunes to eco-political rock operas to the latest, Chrome Dreams II, a re-imagining of an album Neil initially started laying down 30 years ago. Any die-hard Neil fan has a couple stories about the tour when he welcomed his fans at every stop to “Miami Beach”, the night he refused to play any of his hits, or the night he did the aforementioned rock opera in its entirety – before the actual album had been released.

But last night, the only real surprise was that Neil – celebrating his 62nd birthday – was about as amiable and crowd-pleasing as Neil gets. He started off with an all-acoustic, hour-long set, seated, playing with that familiar bent-knee shake and cooing through his harmonica. Opener “From Hank to Hendrix” set the tone – nostalgic, pretty, plaintive -- before he broke out “Ambulance Blues”, a meandering, wistful cut from On the Beach.

Between songs, he’d get up, put his guitar down, sorta wander around the stage, maybe mumble a joke, scratch his head, then sit back down with another guitar and play something else. He obliged fans with three songs from his big-seller Harvest, but this set’s highlight was undeniable. Tonight’s the Night’s “Mellow My Mind” – on record a ragged piece of mid-tempo country-rock with Neil’s voice literally cracking as he strains to hit notes in the chorus – was recast on banjo, strummed and plucked with the same trademark looseness that made the original so great.

After a short break, a three-piece band – bassist Rick Rosas, Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina, and longtime Neil traveling buddy Ben Keith – joined him for an all-electric set. And that set kicked ass. Neil – lurching around the stage, still bent-kneed and shakey as ever – was attacking his guitar with furious one-note solos, all buzzing amps and streaks of feedback. He was also by turns quite tuneful, letting Keith’s pedal steel take the lead on “Winterlong” and bringing in piano and big backup vocals to swell the choruses on “Oh Lonesome Me.” His new material, while not the show’s highlight, still did fine: the grungey, re-ac-tor-ish “Dirty Old Man” was as bizarre as it sounds, “No Hidden Path” sprawled to multiple peaks over its 12 minute jam, and “The Believer” was essentially an indie-pop song with its rudimentary backbeat and light guitar.

But this wasn’t a show to promote a new album and it wasn't a stop on the farewell tour or anything like that. No, this was low-key Neil, just picking out a handful of songs and bashing away with a grin on his face and his buddies behind him. For those of us that have followed the man through detours and countless back alleys, it's one hell of a treat to see him getting back to what he does best.