Neil Young’s next album to feature three songs he wrote in 1963
The material in question is from Shakey’s days playing with The Squires in Winnipeg, three years before he joined Buffalo Springfield.
Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Rock and roll iconoclast Neil Young’s latest album, Talkin’ to the Trees, isn’t even a year old, but that hasn’t stopped the octogenarian from heading right back into the studio. On Tuesday, Young announced that he and his backing band, the Chrome Hearts, had finished mastering their new album at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La studio in Malibu.
Young’s process may have been sped up by the inclusion of three previously written songs. As he noted in the Neil Young Archives, he and the Chrome Hearts recorded five new songs when they realized they were “out.” “We needed more,” Young continued. “The next morning I had a song going through my head and was playing it. I checked it out in the archives and found it was from 1963, unreleased. There were more.” The new record allegedly came together in a month. The title hasn’t been officially revealed, but the blog post was titled “Moon to Moon.” In 1963, Neil Young would have been 17, bopping around Winnipeg with his band The Squires after dropping out of high school. His breakout came after joining Buffalo Springfield in 1966.
Word of a new Chrome Hearts album first surfaced on April 11, when Young blogged about a summer release with an analog original vinyl pressing. He also took the opportunity to implore younger artists to do the same, beseeching Taylor Swift to “go analog so people can hear the difference, Taylor!” Young added that he was removing his IP from Amazon: “I still have a choice and will go back to record stores 100% to support the people. Nuff said.” Shakey has long been a fierce critic of what he calls “corporate control” over society; from 2019 to 2022, he famously removed his music from Spotify.
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