Neil Young announces new archival album 'Road Of Plenty'

Neil Young has announced that he’s working on a new archival album based around material from the mid-to-late 1980s.

The album will consist of music made with his band Crazy Horse during a 1986 US tour, combined with tracks recorded in 1989 with the band he would go on to perform with on Saturday Night Live.

The title track is an early version of what would go on to be released as the song ‘Eldorado’ on Young’s 1989 LP ‘Freedom’.

In a post on his website reflecting on the period, Young said that he first “tried out” the song during a private reunion with his 1960s group Buffalo Springfield.

“It was my fault that we didn’t get together at the time and have a reunion, tour and album,” Young reflected in a post on his website.

He said that he and Crazy Horse have a “monster take” of the track, recorded at a show in Minneapolis in October 1986 which will be included on the album. “How this song escaped is hard for me to believe,” he said.

Three years afterwards, Young and a band consisting of Crazy Horse guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro, drummer Steve Jordan and bassist Charley Drayton “recorded some amazing music” while rehearsing for their SNL appearance, “all of which” will appear on ‘Road Of Plenty’.

“Niko [Bolas, producer] and I have been working on this project for a while and I think it will be a highlight of 2021,” Young said.

A specific date next year for the album’s release is yet to be announced, with a number of archival Neil Young releases on their way in the intervening months.

His legendary ‘lost’ LP ‘Homegrown’, shelved in 1975, is finally coming out after 45 years on June 19, followed by the release of a 2003 live performance ‘Return To Greendale’ on July 17, a 1970s-spanning compilation ‘The Neil Young Archives Volume 2’ on August 21, a 1990 Crazy Horse club gig ‘Rust Bucket’ on October 16 and a 1971 solo acoustic show ‘Young Shakespeare on November 27.

Meanwhile the veteran singer-songwriter recently shared a new, re-recorded version of his 2019 track ‘Shut It Down’, prompted by fans “reaching out [and] expressing the elevated poignancy the song has come to represent during this pandemic”.