Neil Young has treated fans to a well-timed Christmas gift on Saturday with the release of Summer Songs. The eight-track collection compiles previously-unreleased songs from 1987 recording sessions.
“Happy Holidays everyone! I think you will enjoy this very cool recording – lost for years but not forgotten,” he wrote on the Neil Young Archives (NYA) website. “NYA’s files reveal the whole history.”
Related: Watch The Trailer For Neil Young ‘Barn’ Documentary On Making Of New Album [Video]
Produced by The Volume Dealers and mastered by Tim Mulligan, Summer Songs contains cuts that would later appear on studio albums. Tracks from 1989’s Freedom include “Wrecking Ball”, “Someday”, and “Hanging on a Limb”. Young also adds early recordings of “American Dream” and “Name of Love”, which later appeared on Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young‘s 1988 album American Dream, as well as Harvest Moon and Psychedelic Pill‘s “One of These Days” and “For the Love of Man”, respectively. As an added bonus, “Last of His Kind” appears as song number two, which Young debuted on September 19th, 1987 at Farm Aid in Lincoln, NE, but never released on a studio album.
Summer Songs is available to stream now for subscribers of the Neil Young Archives. Head here to listen and for more information.
In other Young news, the singer-songwriter has released his latest studio album with Crazy Horse, Barn. Shared on December 10th, the record serves as a follow-up to 2019’s Colorado and also sees an accompanying documentary of the same name, available now through AARP Members Only Access.
[H/TÂ Rolling Stone]