Neil Young Announces New Live Album EARTH

Neil Young has announced a new album, EARTH. The full-length, due out June 17 via Reprise, comprises recordings from last year's tour behind The Monsanto Years. Its tracklisting includes the previously-unshared "I Won't Quit," along with highlights from Young's discography. For EARTH, Young added new musical overdubs to the mixes, along with tons of nature sounds. Bears, birds, crickets, bees, horses, cows, and "sounds of the earth" can all be prominently heard on the album, juxtaposed with "city sounds" like car horns, according to a press release. Young will play the record in full, and discuss its construction and themes at the Natural History Museum Los Angeles County on May 6. It's the first time he's held a public album preview event. The audio will be streamed through his Pono service. Check out the album art and tracklisting below.

In other Neil Young-related news, two rare films starring the musician are coming to DVD and Blu-Ray for the first time. Digitally-remastered versions of 1979's concert film Rust Never Sleeps and 1982's comedy Human Highway (which stars Young, Dennis Hopper, Russ Tamblyn, and Devo) arrive June 10 via Reprise. (They were originally slated to come out this month, but got pushed back.) Scroll down to view trailers for both films.

Here's how Young described EARTH in a press release:

Ninety-eight uninterrupted minutes long, EARTH flows as a collection of 13 songs from throughout my life, songs I have written about living here on our planet together. Our animal kingdom is well represented in the audience as well, and the animals, insects, birds, and mammals actually take over the performances of the songs at times.

On Instagram, he said the album "does not fit on iTunes":

EARTH

We made a live record and every creature on the planet seemed to show up. Suddenly all the living things of Earth were in the audience going crazy. Then they took over the stage, letting their wild sounds mingle with the Vanilla Singers perfect corporate harmony. Earth's creatures let loose, there were Bee breakdowns, Bird breakdowns and yes, even Wall Street breakdowns, jamming with me and Promise of the Real! The show was non stop bliss for 98 minutes, no breaks. EARTH does not fit on iTunes. It breaks all their rules (and couldn’t all really be heard that way anyway) No one who was there will ever forget the love, wonder and beautiful madness of EARTH. I know I won’t.

Neil

Read "Listening to Neil Young's Live Archives" on the Pitch.

Earth:

01 People Want to Hear About Love
02 Big Box
03 Mother Earth
04 The Monsanto Years 
05 I Won't Quit
06 Western Hero
07 Vampire Blues
08 Hippie Dream
09 After The Gold Rush
10 Wolf Moon
11 Love & Only Love