Neil Young starts well but flags after the break

Neil Young's show at the Academy of Music on Thursday night served as a lesson on the perils of the intermission.

After an absolutely sublime first half, the magical vibe went missing during a 25-minute bathroom break, and for the final hour the 68-year-old Young was inconsistent, rambling, and only intermittently brilliant.

Strolling on stage in jeans and a flannel shirt, Young played most of the solo acoustic show seated, with seven guitars and a banjo within his reach. Not to mention a grand piano to his left, an upright to his right, and a pump organ behind him.

There was an elephant in the impeccable-sounding 157-year-old room. News broke in summer that Young had filed for divorce from his wife, Pegi, after 36 years, and his fans have had to read about the crusty Canadian (and apparent new girlfriend Daryl Hannah) in the gossip pages.

Young never addressed his personal life head-on, but he didn't run from it, either. He opened with "From Hank to Hendrix," from his 1992 album Harvest Moon, and sang, "I always loved your smile, now we're headed for the big divorce, California style." Fans sneakily used smartphones, strictly forbidden, to check whether the lyrics had been altered for the occasion. Nope.

A gorgeously spare "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" followed. And "I'm Glad I Found You," from Young's orchestral album Storytone, due next month, was an open-hearted celebration of new love.

Early on, Young moved from strength to strength: a beautifully phrased cover of Tim Hardin's "Reason to Believe"; a banjo-plucked ragged-but-right take on "Mellow My Mind" from 1975's Tonight's the Night. "A lot of technical musicians didn't like that one," quipped the proud primitive. "They couldn't play out of tune if they tried."

The second half had plenty of fab moments, too: An opening one-two punch of "Pocahontas" and "Heart of Gold," and the rarely played encore "Thrasher," for which Young donned a cowboy hat.

But along the way, focus was lost. Fans could not keep from shouting out between songs, which did not improve Young's mood. He got testy when camera noise distracted him during the less-than-impressive new "Plastic Flowers." And after a terrific rendition of the 1970 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young protest song "Ohio," an audience cry of "CSNY!" was greeted with a curt "Never again!"

Poor song selection and rambling commentary were also to blame. Young railed against conservative lobbying group Citizens United ("Corporations aren't people") and expressed dismay over the environmental record of President Obama.

The latter patter led into "Who's Gonna Stand Up?", a would-be eco-anthem off Storytone. It's a blunt-force broadside in the tradition of forced-march salvos like 2006's anti-George W. Bush tirade "Let's Impeach the President."

"I really do love this planet," he said earlier on. "I love the animals, and the birds," adding, less convincingly, "I like the people, too."

He stayed on that message with "Mother Earth (Natural Anthem)," another weak, awkward composition that at least had its gloriously surging pump-organ tone going for it. Young returned to it again with the 1970 set closer "After the Gold Rush." "We got Mother Nature on the run in the 21st century," he sang in a cracked, keening voice, opting on the third try to express himself with poetic grace.

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