Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Toast (2001)

Sometime in late 2000 or early 2001, Neil Young went into the studio with Crazy Horse and cut an album that was to be named 'Toast', after the studio where it was recorded. The only song to see the light of day from these sessions was 'Goin’ Home', which appeared on the underwhelming 'Are You Passionate?', but for years Young has claimed that 'Toast' is on the verge of being officially released, and he was enthusiastic about it in a Rolling Stone interview in in 2008, saying "It's an amazing listening experience. It was recorded in 5.1. It’s a mind-blowing record, and I don’t think it's a commercial record, but it's great rock & roll, very moody, kind of jazzy. It was recorded in the same place where Coltrane was recorded, so there's a lot of heavy stuff in there". He expanded on the songs, saying "The music of 'Toast' is about a relationship. There is a time in many relationships that go bad, a time long before the break up, where it dawns on one of the people, maybe both, that it’s over. This was that time. The sound is murky and dark, but not in a bad way, and from the first note, you can feel the sadness that permeates the recording. That song, with its refrain, "Don't say you love me", is called 'Quit', while the next one 'Standing In The Light' is sort of like a Deep Purple hit. 'Goin' Home' follows, painting a landscape where time doesn't matter - because everything is going south. A lady is lost in her car. The dark city surrounds her - past, present and future. Then the scene changes to a religious guy who just lost his job as a logger - he can't cut any more tress and so he's turning on Jesus, and then the album closes with 'Gateway Of Love', beckoning with "background noise on a changing sky". I had forgotten about these songs, put them out of my mind and went on living my life". However, like many of Young's unreleased albums it currently remains locked away, so we'll have to find another way to hear it. Although 'Toast' was never released, it seems that Young really was intending it to appear, as he played all the songs from it on his 2001 world tour, and many of these concerts were recorded. While 'Quit' did eventually appear on 'Are You Passionate' alongside 'Goin' Home', this was a re-recorded version with Booker T. & The M.G.s, so I've taken a recording with Crazy Horse from a Montreux gig, and added the other four tracks from his Japanese concert at the Fuji Rock Festival, so that we can hear an approximation of what the album might have sounded like. As it is quite short at just 33 minutes, I've added a cover that Young has performed a few times with Crazy Horse but which never seems to have made it to an official live album, rounding it out to a more acceptable 44 minutes. 

Track listing 

01 Quit
02 Standing In The Light Of Love
03 Goin' Home
04 Hold You In My Arms
05 Gateway Of Love
06 All Along The Watchtower