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Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s ‘Americana’ Actually Due in June

Neil Young

Neil Young and his longtime backing band Crazy Horse will reunite for a new album called Americana, due out June 5 (and not never, as we’d theorized). As its title suggests, the LP is a collection of classic and traditional folk songs that Young, who happens to be Canadian, believes represents “the fabric of our American culture,” with Young and Crazy Horse reinterpreting each track. “They’re songs we all know from kindergarten, but Crazy Horse has rearranged them, and they now belong to us,” Young told Rolling Stone. The album is Young’s first with Crazy Horse since 2002’s musical novel Greendale (which is not a Community concept album).

Young has also penned extensive liner notes that put each song in a historical context. For instance, the British anthem “God Save the Queen” is the closing track on Americana, and Young writes he included that song because it was still part of the America’s musical lexicography during the Commonwealth days. “Gallows Pole,” a popular Finnish folk song later popularized by Led Zeppelin, is also featured on Americana, as is “Get a Job,” a hit for the Silhouettes in 1957. Young and Crazy Horse also re-recorded a Billy Edd Wheeler track called “High Flyin’ Bird,” which Young covered with his pre-Buffalo Springfield band the Squires in 1964. Staples like Woody Guthrie’s “The Land Is Your Land” and Stephen Foster’s “Oh Susanna” also reside on Americana.

Americana

  1. “Oh Susannah”
  2. “Clementine”
  3. “Tom Dooley”
  4. “Gallows Pole”
  5. “Get a Job”
  6. “Travel On”
  7. “High Flyin’ Bird”
  8. “She’ll Be Comin ‘Round The Mountain”
  9. “This Land Is Your Land”
  10. “Wayfarin’ Stranger”
  11. “God Save The Queen”