The Fat Angel Sings

Ian Shelton always gets right to the point. It’s what people like the most about him. He formed the band Militarie Gun during the pandemic, recording demos on his iPhone, and visiting his practice space every day. He treated it like a job, using his pandemic assistance like a label advance. But he wasn’t sure if anyone was going to care until they played their first show, a 2021 surprise set in a friend’s backyard in Los Angeles.

By then, the band’s EPs, 2020’s “My Life Is Over” and 2021’s two-part “All Roads Lead To The Gun” had been released and were catching on in hardcore and punk circles. These initial audiences, who’d been cooped up for the past year and needed a release, were eager to scream along with Shelton’s words back at him, starting with the opening song “Don’t Pick Up The Phone.”

“Specifically ‘I want money, I want love,’ was a thing that people sang along the hardest at the first show,” he remembers, quoting his song “Don’t Pick Up the Phone.” “And I was like, I can’t believe that such simple lyrics have captured people because obviously, it seems kind of silly or just overly simplistic, but this still catches you. It catches people and they love singing it back.”

Militarie Gun traffic in songs that catch you the first time you hear them, and that don’t need more than two minutes to make an impact. Their new album, “Life Under the Gun”, has 12 of them in less than a half hour, each one telling you exactly what’s on Shelton’s mind. He can’t help being an open book, even if he sometimes worries about how he comes off.

“Very High,” is a hard-strummed pop-rock banger that sounds like if The Lemonheads got in the mosh-pit, It revolves around a brilliantly simple chorus: “I’ve been feeling pretty down/so I get/very high.”

“I just was honestly using a lot of drugs at the time, not in an especially bleak way, but around that time, there was nothing going on in life and I was really aiming for numbing my reality ’cause it was so painfully boring and slow and it was pandemic times and there just was nothing to be done,” he says, noting that he was enjoying and delivering legal weed at the time.

Versions of “Very High” have been around since the earliest days of Militarie Gun, Shelton says. “We were afraid of the song for a long time,” he says. “The lyrics are almost plainly stupid… But I prefer them that way and I was nervous about that simplicity and putting that out to people.”

Specifically, Shelton admits he was wary about the reaction from a lot of the “cool guys or people” that I would assume would have been the haters of the song have actually personally hit me to be like, ‘Oh this is a great song,’ or said something very positive about it.”

Militarie Gun is from the world of hardcore punk, sharing members with scene stalwarts such as Drug Church and Modern Color, and, by and large, mostly makes hardcore punk. “Very High,” isn’t technically all that hardcore on the surface, but that’s not much of a problem for the current wave of bands and fans redefining what the genre sounds and feels like these days.

“We just identify with the ethos and the DIY nature of hardcore,” he says, “which is also kind of laughable now, considering obviously we have a team of people surrounding us.”

Growing up in the Bay Area, Shelton was introduced to punk and hardcore at a young age, which made for a rude culture shock when his parents moved the family to Enumclaw, Wa., a small town mostly-known for a bizarre “horse sex case” that you’re better off not Googling.

He grew up the child of two “constantly relapsing alcoholics,” and didn’t meet his biological father until he was 12. A school counselor introduced him to the straight-edge scene, and he grew up attending Alateen meetings and attending his parents’ Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He attended his first punk show, the arty-hardcore band Ceremony, at 15, and later moved to moved to Seattle and then L.A. He sang and drummed in the ultra-aggressive band Regional Justice Center, named for the institution in which his brother has been incarcerated for assault.

Regional Justice Center was preparing for shows when the pandemic hit, and then largely went inactive. (Though Shelton says there’s a finished album from the group that will one day get released.) He admits he has an addictive personality and a near-pathological need to make music. Shelton immediately began working on new songs during quarantine, something that combined the aggression and catharsis that drew him to hardcore, with the melody and songcraft he loved in decidedly non-hardcore bands like Guided by Voices and Pavement.

“My original intention was somewhere between Born Against and Greg Ginn’s guitar playing, and then eventually Modest Mouse kind of really entered the matrix heavily,” he says, “and that hodgepodge of things that I think that, specifically, probably a lot of hardcore kids either aren’t very interested in or talk shit on things like Modest Mouse. But I wasn’t thinking that way early on.”

By filtering hardcore energy through what could be considered the prism of Classic Alternative And Indie Rock, Militarie Gun, along with like-minded peers such as Scowl, High Vis and the now fully mainstream Turnstile helped to breathe life back into both genres, landing somewhere new in the process.

“I very vividly remember him sending me the demo for ‘Very High,’ right after he wrote it and I was just blown away by how overtly poppy it was while still very much feeling like an MG song,” remembers James Goodson. He is Militarie Gun’s former publicist, and like Shelton, the longtime punk underwent a spiritual rebirth in the pandemic, emerging with the tough power-pop outfit Dazy, who toured with Militarie Gun; the two even collaborated last year for the instant scene classic “Pressure Cooker.”

He remembers hearing songs from “Life Under the Gun” even in its nascent stages, as a sign that his friend wasn’t interested in being hemmed by anyone’s opinions about what is and what isn’t allowed in the subculture he’s found a home in.

“I think that was right around when the EPs were coming out, or maybe even before, so it was really impressive to see how he was already pushing their sound so early on,” he adds. “I’m always inspired by the way Ian will have a clear vision for something and will relentlessly chip away at it until he’s seen it through to the best of his ability.”

Shelton estimates that Militarie Gun, which also includes guitarists Nick Cogan and William Acuña, drummer Vince Nguyen, and bassist Max Epstein, played 90 shows as soon as touring become a feasible thing for bands, and then didn’t stop, all while obsessively writing and reworking the songs that would eventually constitute their debut album.

“Our first tour was 50 shows in like 50-plus days. And it was like every other day we listened to our demos of the album and it was just obsessing over what was going to be “Life Under the Gun,” he says, “and we went in with the sequence already figured out, we knew what it needed to be. And basically, those two years have just been trying our best to make way for whatever needed to happen now.

“Before we ever played a show, we had these songs demoed in full and so we knew that the reality would not catch up to what we believed ourselves to be for quite some time.” From early single “Ain’t No Flowers,” he’s deployed a recognizable, onomatopoeic “oof-oof” grunt that he often deploys to announce his presence, like a hardcore version of a sexy-sounding woman saying “Maybach Music.”

“I’m a big fan of hip-hop and the idea that you know who’s about to start singing before they start singing is a huge thing. It was really important to me and just I don’t ever want it to be confused with who’s singing.”

Shelton often brings up the idea of “incompetent hands.” He learned how to play guitar for Militarie Gun, but notes, “I definitely am getting a little more skilled, but the incompetent hands thing is the filter that makes the songs good I think. I don’t think anyone wants to hear virtuosic guitar playing in a Militarie Gun song. I certainly don’t think I do.

“So it’s about chasing the naivete of it, of not looking past simplicity to stay in somewhat of a youthful mindset for creating a song.”

But while he has a first-thought, best though, instinctual approach to songwriting, lyrically he knew he wanted to go deep for his debut. He knew he wanted to examine his upbringing, and how his parent’s substance abuse and perpetual poverty impacted him in ways he’s still coming to grips with.

“I can’t outrun these sets of topics and I really have to address them head-on. I don’t think it helps come to terms or rationalize or really do a ton internally, but I think what its biggest asset to me is just that it kind of puts all of it on the outside of myself so I could view it in a different way,” he says.

While demoing the album with co-producer Taylor Young, an engineer they were working with said “Man, all these songs are pretty fucking depressing. I don’t know if you’ve realized that.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I guess I didn’t realize that ’cause at the same time I’m trying to make more or less a pop-rock record.’ And then you look at the body of work and that was actually when I realized that that was the theme of the record. I didn’t know that there was a theme and I kind of zoomed out and was like, ‘Oh, all these songs intersect with this one general concept.”

Ultimately, much of “Life Under the Gun” revolves around the idea that the only way to make peace with your past is to forgive and come to terms with your pain, a simple concept that is difficult for many people to accept.

“I think forgiveness is somewhat easy for me. I think that I’ve always been in the cycle of being apologized to. I think that there was this law of life of fuck up, forgive, fuck up, forgive. There was always kind of new amends being made because my mother was a constant relapsing alcoholic,” he says.

It was important to him to discuss forgiveness “because I felt like the culture at large was so unkind. And it didn’t make sense to me. You have to admit that you also fuck up. So it’s just silly, the concept that you don’t forgive others, but… would ever expect your own forgiveness?”.

“Life Under the Gun” will be released on Loma Vista, a prominent indie that is the home to St. Vincent and Ghost. Militarie Gun was the first hardcore act to get signed after Turnstile blew up after the breakthrough success of Glow On, and “Life Under the Gun” is a useful bellwether of just how big this scene can get, and whether hardcore is on its way to becoming a major new youth music, and whether Militare Gun and their upcoming tour mates Scowl are set to win the hearts of America’s teenagers.

“I’m loving the records that are coming out and seeing the success of our peers. These are all people I’ve been around for 10 years and to see everyone have the same passion level and the same drive this whole time and just finally getting on is incredible,” he says. “I think we’re at the point where just Turnstile is the next Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, that’s just this generation’s band.”

His friends in Turnstile have shown Shelton what level a hardcore band can rise to. Like them, he’s had a song in a Taco Bell commercial, because we all have to eat. Turnstile has been playing arenas since “Glow On” and will be a Riot Fest headliner in the fall. It’s a path that Shelton admits he wouldn’t mind following.

“As long as the music that we are making is genuine, I’m happy with whatever result,” he says. “So do I want a big reality in exchange for making music I’m not passionate about? No, not in any way. but if the songs that I like making do get success because they’re the songs I like making them, then of course I want that but I don’t want it at the expense of the creative.”

The Militarie Gun modus operandi is catchy and abrasive, and makes certain to never lose sight of either side; even the singles have rough edges that can’t be sanded off, and they continue to traffic in confrontational poses (album covers with pictures of burning RVs on them, merchandise that features drawings of police officers getting stabbed). He wants to reach people, and he wants to offer them the same outlet that once saved him. It’s why hardcore is having such a moment, and why he will be fine no matter what happens because he’ll always have a home there.

“I think people just want vulnerability, I think they want honesty. I love pop music, I love all sorts of things, but there’s not that honesty in every place. It is somewhat a difficult thing to come by,” he says. “And if there’s one thing that hardcore and punk music does offer, at its best, I think it offers emotional vulnerability and honesty.

“I was just an angry kid and I was looking for angry things. I wanted to scream. I’ve got problems. I’m a fucked up kid. It’s as simple as that and hopefully, we and our peers can provide that same catharsis to this next generation of people.”

Like the rest ot the world, Neil Young went into seclusion in 2020, looking for social distance and viral safety in the wilderness as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the planet. He kept in touch through streamed performances from his cabin hideaway, but the touring life of this essential classic rocker and folk singer was on indefinite hold, even as the music world came stumbling back to life. No one could say when – or if – he would return to the stage.

But last night (June 30th) in Los Angeles, Young ended his long hiatus, launching his first tour since 2019 with an intimate solo set loaded both with rarities and some of his biggest hits, including “Heart of Gold” and “Ohio.” For Neil Young and his fans, the obscure and the familiar have long carried equal weight. At 77 years old, Young just rolls onward with his music of deep feeling, and neither rust nor the accumulated years have done much to slow him down.

Young had previously explained that he wanted this solo acoustic tour to focus on songs he hasn’t played live. “I don’t want to come back and do the same songs again,” Young said [via Rolling Stone]. “I’ll feel like I was on some sort of carnival ride. I’d rather be doing these other songs I haven’t done. … They are songs that apply to my life right now and apply to everyone’s lives in this era that we’re in.”

For this first show, Young chose the 1,200-capacity Ford Theater, right across the canyon from the much larger Hollywood Bowl. He’s been playing arenas and big amphitheaters for 50 years and has rarely appeared at a small venue (like the beloved L.A. honky-tonk the Palomino back in 1984), so Friday’s 90-year-old theater location was a statement on starting things back at human scale. Young arrived dressed for the train-themed Coastal Tour in shades of faded blue and gray, spattered with white paint on his back, the brim of an engineer’s cap low over his forehead.

He began the night with a surprising choice, “I’m the Ocean,” a driving guitar epic from his 1995 “Mirror Ball” album with the rock band Pearl Jam. The song was a bristling highlight from that record, but Young hasn’t performed it live since 1997, The acoustic reinterpretation perhaps captured something of his current state of mind, with lyrics declaring, “People my age / they don’t do the things I do / they go somewhere / while I run away with you.”

Young also played “Song X” from that same album, this time on electric guitar, as he stomped on his effects pedals for a heavy and luxurious riff, fading out with a blast of reverb.

“A Dream That Can Last” was performed on upright piano, with Young’s imprecise playing only adding to the charm of its tumbling melody. “I’m so happy I was here before AI was here,” he joked. Following the bright and heavy tones of “Prime of Life,” Young ambled over to the grand piano for “When I Hold You in My Arms,” electric guitar still slung over his shoulder. An overlooked gem from 2002’s “Are You Passionate?”, and recorded originally with Booker T. & the MG’s, the song began with a cheerful piano melody before Young spun on his stool to solo on guitar for a gently searing blues line, tapping the heels of both feet to the rhythm as he played.

If Young’s performance at the Ford at times seemed made up as he went along, the outlines were meticulously planned and paced. Crew members quietly stepped on and off stage to hand Young a guitar or to switch out a piano bench with a stool, or occasionally add brief accompaniment on piano or tap a small xylophone. Behind him, a model train sat on a track, which Young was unable to get moving when he arrived — the one glitch of the evening.

The lights were kept low, and Young was an amusing host between songs, as he joked about finding his old pump organ decades earlier “in a junk store on Main Street in Memphis City” and paying just $800 to bring it home. “I’m a good shopper,” he said to laughs.

When he stood beside the organ and asked the crowd to choose between “Mother Earth” or “Mr. Soul,” many in the crowd predictably shouted for the latter, an early ripper from his days in Buffalo Springfield. That may have just been a tease, as Young was soon back at the organ playing the heavy, majestic chords of “Mother Earth,” a better and more soulful choice for the night.

After a raging “Ohio” on electric guitar came a poignant “Days That Used To Be,” which looked back on his generation of idealists and the compromises that followed the 1960s. Recorded originally with Crazy Horse in 1990, its message was more devastating as an acoustic ballad, as Young sang, “seems like such a simple thing to follow one’s own dream / but possessions and concession are not often what they seem … but we never had to make those deals / in the days that used to be.”

Another major theme of the night, and of his overall career, has been the defense of the environment. He began the encore by attempting to get the crowd to sing along to the anthemic “Love Earth,” scolding with a half-serious “You suck!” when fans fell short. Young closed with a wistful, emotional “Four Strong Winds,” a folk song originally recorded by the Canadian duo Ian and Sylvia before it appeared on his own 1978 album “Comes a Time”.

Neil Young said his goodbyes to a standing ovation from a crowd packed with fans, friends, and family. He began to leave, but before the lights went up, turned around and got back to centerstage in time to finish one more thing: finally getting that model train to run.

Neil Young June 30th, 2023 Set List
1. “I’m the Ocean” (From Mirror Ball, 1995)
2. “Homefires” (From Archives Vol. II, 2020)
3. “Burned” (From Buffalo Springfield, 1966)
4. “On the Way Home” (From Last Time Around, 1968)
5. “If You Got Love”
6. “My Heart” (From Sleeps With Angels, 1994)
7. “A Dream That Can Last” (From Sleeps With Angels, 1994)
8. “Song X” (From Mirror Ball, 1995)
9. “Prime of Life” (From Sleeps With Angels, 1994)
10. “When I Hold You in My Arms” (From Are You Passionate?, 2002)
11. “Mother Earth (Natural Anthem)” (From Ragged Glory, 1990)
12. “Ohio” (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young single, 1970)
13. “Days That Used to Be” (From Ragged Glory, 1990)
14. “Don’t Forget Love” (From Barn, 2021)
15. “Heart of Gold” (From Harvest, 1972)
16. “Love Earth” (From World Record, 2022)
17. “Four Strong Winds” (Ian and Sylvia cover)

The 3 Clubmen, the “three-headed Frankenstein’s monster dancing at a neurodivergent singles club” featuring XTC‘s Andy Partridge, have released their self-titled debut EP. You can hear elements of XTC’s early angsty years and their later orch pop era in their four tracks that are as much a creation of fellow Clubmen Jen Olive and Stu Rowe as they are Partridge’s.

“I’d go and hang out at Stu’s bunker, because it’s better than ‘playing with yourself’, arf arf, no, I think of him as a brother and love being down at his place,” says Partridge of how the project came about. “He’d say things like, ‘Andy, listen to what I found, that I think we’ve forgotten, it’s really good’ or things like ‘I sent this idea to Jen and she zapped this great vocal suggestion back.’”

The culmination of a decade of antics from these longtime collaborators, the EP is an avant-pop delight offering a seductive blend of experimental pop, jazz and sci-fi soundtrack strangeness.

While each artist has worked with the others in some form since 2008, The 3 Clubmen marks the first time that Stu, Andy and Jen have combined forces as a trio, an inevitable partnership once described as “a three-headed Frankenstein’s monster dancing at a neurodivergent singles club”.

Andy Partridge– vocals / guitars / keys / programming / production Jen Olive– vocals / guitar Stu Rowe– bass / guitars / keys / programming / production Additional instrumentation- Frank Abrams – Flute / sax Curtis Tweed – Slide guitar Andreas Rebhuhn – Drums ‘Bangy’ – Percussion,.

Chicago band Ratboys are set to release their fourth studio album, produced by Chris Walla “The Window”, on August 25th. The band have already shared early single’s “Black Earth, WI” and “It’s Alive!,” and now Ratboys are back with the album’s poignant title track, plus a video directed by John TerEick. “I wrote this song a few days after the death of my grandma in June 2020,” says Ratboys’ Julia Steiner. “She didn’t have COVID, but because of the pandemic my grandpa wasn’t able to visit her in person at the nursing home to say goodbye. He ended up standing outside her room and saying goodbye through an open window. A lot of the lyrics are direct quotes of things he said to her in those final moments.”

“The Window” is coming out on August 25th on Topshelf Records we recorded this album with our hero Chris Walla out in Seattle last year, and it was an absolutely life-changing experience for the four of us. honestly it was everything we ever dreamed that making a record could be!!!

“The Window” will be out 25th August via Topshelf Records.

Last month, Blur announced their first new album in eight years, “The Ballad Of Darren”, and introduced it with lead single “The Narcissist.” Not long after, they played some warm-up shows where they did live rarities and debuted a couple of new songs. One of those songs was “St. Charles Square,” which they’re releasing as the album’s official second single.

In an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music 1, Damon Albarn talked a bit about the song: “I was just really relieved it went this way in the studio. I mean, in my demo it sort of alluded to it because of the chords that hold in the chorus — it’s got that chug to it — but Graham [Coxon] really went with it … It’s got an amazing atmosphere. Everybody’s playing really well on that thing.”

“Do you know what the whole thing has really felt like?” Albarn continued. “We’re sort of somewhere in 1992, something like that, ’92, ’93. We’re just sort of back. I don’t know. And when we go on stage, that’s we’re where we start off … I’ve always kind of felt like it’s not just about singing about yourself. You’ve got to kind of bring where you’re singing it and writing it with you.”

“St Charles Square” – the second single taken from the new album ‘The Ballad Of Darren’

Nearly ten years in the making, “The Task Has Overwhelmed Us” is the long-awaited fourth volume in The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project series. Coming September 29th via Glitterhouse Records.

Conceived in 2006 by the late Gun Club titan’s guitarist Cypress Grove, the Project has always aimed to highlight Pierce as one of America’s most fascinatingly influential singer-songwriters of the last century while propelling his outpourings into modern times by placing it in the hands of former collaborators, friends and fans.

Following 2009’s “We Are Only Riders”, 2012’s “The Journey Is Long” and 2014’s “Axels and Sockets”, “The Task Has Overwhelmed Us” presents stellar interpretations of tracks from Pierce’s Gun Club and solo canons along with fresh works constructed from rehearsal skeletons, previously unheard lyrics, songs only performed live. Taking song ideas without lyrics and words looking for musical settings gave rise to what Cypress Grove calls “Frankenstein songs”.

The stellar roll-call of contributors features the Project’s original recurring core including Nick Cave, Debbie Harry, Mark Lanegan, Lydia Lunch, Youth, Jim Jones, Warren Ellis, Mark Stewart, Hugo Race, Cypress himself plus Mick Harvey and J.P. Shilo as The Amber Lights, even Jeffrey himself from original tapes. These are joined by new bloods including Dave Gahan, Suzie Stapleton, Duke Garwood, Pam Hogg, The Coathangers, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s Peter Hayes and Leah Shapiro, Humanist, The Walkabouts’ Chris Eckman, Jozef van Wissem, Jim Jarmusch, Chantal Acda and Welsh space-rockers Sendelica with US vocalists Wonder and Dynamax Roberts. Like Pierce’s beloved jazz, the cast often spill into each other’s tracks.

The mood throughout the eighteen tracks is of rare gems crafted with love, respect and the energy of committed fans, even obsessives channeling whatever facet or fragment of Pierce’s unruly muse fires their creative juices. It’s pretty much carved in legend how Jeffrey Lee Pierce roared out of post-punk LA brandishing an incendiary genius that flamed in the spotlight for just fifteen years before his untimely death in 1996. Despite the impact of the Gun Club and resonance of Pierce’s back catalogue, his legacy seemed in danger of shrinking to eternal cult status earlier this century, fading against modern blandness yet ever-radiating for a gaggle of core diehards he’d touched with his supernatural muse (quite possibly in a blizzard of chaos).

Then along came London-based guitarist Cypress Grove, who’d played with Jeffrey in his final years gigging and on 1992’s “Ramblin’ Jeffrey Lee & Cypress Grove” With Willie Love. Sorting out his loft one day in 2006, Cypress found an anonymous cassette containing bedroom rehearsals for “Ramblin’… – “very vague but good enough to work from,” he says. “So I had the idea of asking people who worked with Jeffrey, were friends with him or who simply admired his work to help me complete the songs.”
“The Cypress Tape” would soon be joined by other unrealized song sources from diverse tapes supplied by key characters in Jeffrey’s life coming on board, including Gene Temesy, who started the Gun Club fan club in 1984 and brought home Pierce’s ‘98 autobiography Go Tell The Mountain, writer-DJ-musician Phast Phreddie Patterson and Jeffrey’s sister Jacqui, who supplied unfinished songs and previously unseen writings she’d discovered after her brother’s death. “The source material for some of the songs was so vague that it could be interpreted in many ways,” says Cypress. “There was no definitive or ‘original’ version. It was like trying to restore a painting where much of the material was missing.” (Lunch’s turning some lyrics from Phreddie’s collection into the scabrous nightmare roll of ‘Time Drains Away’, bolstered by Jarmusch on guitar and van Wissem’s medieval lute).

From Gahan’s opening haunted piano ballad take on ‘Mother of Earth’ through, for example, Lanegan singing ‘Go Tell The Mountain’ backed by Ellis and Cave (who back Jeffrey himself on ‘Yellow Eyes’), Cave duetting beautifully with Debbie Harry again on ‘On the Other Side’ to Sendelica and Secret Knowledge’s Wonder hotwiring ‘Bad America’ into caterwauling mayhem mixed by veteran electro-Def Jam producer Jay Burnett, NY rapper Dynamax acknowledging Jeffrey’s hiphop obsession over the juddering beats. 

“The journey is long and we are only riders. Long ago we had committed to our little endeavour and now the task has overwhelmed us, so that we have simply become axels and sockets in a growing menacing machine.” – Jeffrey Lee Pierce

Nearly ten years in the making, “The Task Has Overwhelmed Us” is the long-awaited fourth volume in The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project series coming September 29th via Glitterhouse Records on LP, lim. LP, CD and digital. Pre-order here: https://linktr.ee/jlpsessionsproject

The first single taken by Nick Cave & Debbie Harry entitled “On The Other Side” will be released June 30! More news soon.

Neil Young released a whole lot of music in the ‘70s, and he could’ve released more. In 1977, Young and Crazy Horse came out with their LP “American Stars ’N Bars”. Young also had another LP ready to go, and it never came out. The fabled solo album “Chrome Dreams” has built up a reputation, over the years, as one of history’s great lost albums. Neil Young has had a few of those, and he’s lately been giving those records their long-delayed releases as part of his Neil Young Archives series. Now, finally, “Chrome Dreams” will get a release of its own.

“Chrome Dreams” built its reputation thanks to a bootlegged acetate record that’s been handed down, in different forms, over the decades. Young eventually released most of the songs that would’ve been on “Chrome Dreams” including the classics “Pocahontas,” “Powderfinger,” and “Sedan Delivery,” all of which would eventually appear on “Rust Never Sleeps”. But some of those songs have never come out in any form.

This morning, Young announced that “Chrome Dreams” will be coming out next month, with cover art from Ronnie Wood. Young recorded all 12 tracks between 1974 and 1976, and he’s just shared the original version of “Sedan Delivery,” which has lyrics that weren’t on the version that came out on “Rust Never Sleeps“. (That version was already on YouTube, in bootlegged form, but this is the authorized one.) Below, listen to that version of “Sedan Delivery,” .

Immerse yourself in the powerful resonance of Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s ‘Sedan Delivery’, an original track from the long-awaited album, ‘Chrome Dreams’. Initially slated for release in 1977, ‘Chrome Dreams’ has undergone a transformative journey, embodying the ever-evolving spirit of Neil Young’s extraordinary career. Now, it emerges as Young envisioned it, featuring 12 classic songs, including four originals. ‘Sedan Delivery’ stands out with its unique lyrics not found in later versions, offering a fresh take on this classic. The album, released via Reprise Records, encapsulates studio recordings from 1974-1976, with two previously unreleased versions and four tracks making their vinyl debut. Experience the debut release of the legendary 1977 ‘Lost’ album and let the timeless sound of Neil Young and Crazy Horse transport you.

Here’s what the press release says about the “Chrome Dreams” versions:

“Powderfinger” is the early/first solo version, the original. “Pocahontas” is the same version that first appeared on “Rust Never Sleeps”, but without the overdubs. “Sedan Delivery” and “Hold Back the Tears” are originals with lyrics that were not included in later released versions. Both are very different versions than previously released.

“Stringman,” is another original performance, included on the “Odeon/Budokan” disc in Archives Vol. II; prior to that, the song had only appeared on Young’s “Unplugged” album in a later version, not the original.

“Chrome Dreams” is available through Reprise Records 11th August.

Nottingham post-punks Do Nothing blend jerky, spidery rhythms with surreal, half-spoken vocals that recall the Fall ‘s Mark E. Smith. Do Nothing was formed in 2017 by four long-time school friends: frontman Chris Bailey, guitarist Kasper Sandstrøm, drummer Andy Harrison, and bassist Charlie Howarth. All had played in various acts around the city; the band got their start at the popular Maze Club. Bailey, whose father was a singer in an a cappella folk group, grew up listening to the sounds of Simon and Garfunkel , and his own biggest influence was Tom Waits. Initially attempting to copy big names like LCD Soundsystem (as heard on their first 7″ single, “Gangs,” released in 2019), they eventually became more confident about doing their own thing, and Bailey gave his stream-of-consciousness lyrics and outsider stage persona free rein. Associated with, but wary of, the then-popular post-punk revival, they made clear it was their intention to follow their own path. Their debut EP, Zero Dollar Bill, was released in 2020; another, Glueland, arrived the following year, and now comes the stunning album.

“Snake Sideways”, the debut album – June 30th