In a 2008 interview with Rolling Stone, Neil Young spoke about an album called Toast that he had recorded seven years earlier with longtime band Crazy Horse. “It’s a mind blowing record, and I don’t think it’s a commercial record, but it’s great rock and roll, very moody, kind of jazzy,” Young said. “It was recorded in the same place where Coltrane was recorded, so there’s a lot of heavy stuff in there.”
That certainly sounds intriguing, don’t you think? But if anyone read this at the time and began counting down the days until they could own a copy of Toast for themselves, they’d need to wait a little longer. Fourteen years longer, in fact. According to a report at Pitchfork, Toast is set for release this July — 21 years after it was first recorded.
One song from the sessions ended up on Young’s 2002 album Are You Passionate?, while the rest have remained unheard until now. When he revisited the album last year, Young wrote admiringly of his musical compatriots. “It must be said that here Crazy Horse shows a depth never seen or heard before. The greatest group I have ever met,” he wrote. “This is a pinnacle. Where they let me go, where they took me, was unbelievable. I couldn’t stay.”
Will this prove to be the toast — pun very much intended — of Young’s archival work? On July 8, we’ll know for sure.
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