Neil Young to release '70s lost album, ‘Oceanside Countryside’

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Neil Young is set to release yet another lost album.

In a message shared on his website, the 79-year-old, Toronto-born singer-songwriter says he has dusted off recordings he made between May and December in 1977 for an album that he had called Oceanside Countryside.

“This Analog Original album was recorded in 1977 and unreleased,” Young wrote in a statement. “These songs are the original mixes done at the time of the recordings in the order I planned for the album. I sang the vocals and played the instruments on Oceanside in Florida at Triad studios and Malibu at Indigo studio. I sang the vocals and recorded with my great band of friends, Ben Keith, Joe Osborn, Karl T. Himmel, and Rufus Thibodeaux at Crazy Mama’s in Nashville on Countryside. I hope you enjoy this treasure of an Analog Original recording, recorded by Tim Mulligan, as much as I do.”

The album, which hits stories on Feb. 14, preceded 1978’s Comes a Time and three songs — Goin’ Back, Human Highway and Field of Opportunity — that appear on both records.

Nearly 50 years later, after listening to the tracks again, Young feels he should have gone ahead and released the album at the time.

“Listening to it now, I think I should have put it out back then,” he said.

Back in 2021, Young released another lost album he recorded in the 1980s entitled Johnny’s Island.

At the time, Young described the record as a “complete album” that featured unreleased tracks like Big Pearl, Island in the Sun and Love Hotel, along with “others you may have heard before.”

Johnny’s Island was recorded shortly after his 1982 album, Trans.

Prior to that, in 2020, Young released his highly sought after Homegrown LP.

In early 1975, Young was putting the finishing touches on the acoustic record. An album cover had been created, the track list was set, but Young got cold feet ahead of its scheduled release after playing the record for some of his friends.

“It was just a very down album,” Young told Rolling Stone. “A lot of the songs had to do with me breaking up with my old lady. It was a little too personal…it scared me.”

Instead, he dusted off songs he’d been recording for 1973’s unfinished Tonight’s the Night and released those instead.

mdaniell@postmedia.com