Neil Young and Crazy Horse have shared the first song from their upcoming album Colorado, a gentle love ballad (especially by Crazy Horse standards) titled “Milky Way.” Young has performed the song several times at concerts over the past few months – both solo acoustic and with Promise of the Real – but Colorado marks the first time Crazy Horse have tackled it.
Colorado, available to preorder now ahead of its October 25th release date, was cut in April at the Studio in the Clouds recording facility just outside the Colorado ski resort of Telluride. It’s the first Neil Young and Crazy Horse album since 2012’s Psychedelic Pill, and the first since guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro retired from the group. He was replaced by Nils Lofgren, who played with the Crazy Horse rhythm section of Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina on the Tonight’s the Night album and tour as well as on numerous Neil Young albums. “It’s been a beautiful opportunity to play with dear friends that are still alive and well,” Lofgren told Rolling Stone in March.
The album sessions were filmed for the upcoming documentary Mountaintop Sessions, which will be released to over 100 theaters in October. “It’s a wild one folks,” Young wrote on his Archives website. “You will see the whole process just as it went down! Worts and all! I don’t think a film about this subject with the openness and intensity we have captured has ever been seen.”
Young hasn’t toured with Crazy Horse since 2014, but they did a handful of California theater dates in May 2018 and two nights in Winnipeg this January. An American arena tour was initially penciled in for later this year, but it has been postponed so Young can focus on a large slate of archival film projects. He is, however, playing the Harvest Moon – A Gathering charity show in Lake Hughes, California on September 14th, Farm Aid in East Troy, Wisconsin on September 21st and a Farm Aid warmup show at the Murat Theater in Indianapolis, Indiana on September 19th.