Neil Young Duets With the Beach Boys’ Al Jardine on New Song

After dropping his first solo album in 2010, Beach Boys co-founder Al Jardine is continuing his late-blooming solo career with a new EP, Islands in the Sun. The standout track is “My Plane Leaves Tomorrow (Au Revoir),” on which Jardine trades lead vocals and harmonies with Neil Young — the song was recorded during sessions for 2010’s A Postcard From California, which also featured Young, alongside Stephen Stills and the late David Crosby.

“My Plane Leaves Tomorrow” also features a trumpet part by Flea, who contributed bass to Postcard. “It resonates now with the political unrest over in the Middle East,” Jardine recently told Rolling Stone. “It’s about a service person who goes overseas and has to serve his country.”

The EP’s title track feels like a lost Eighties Beach Boys song, while “Highway 101 (Rosarita Beach Cafe)” is a new take on the Lieber/Stoller-penned Coasters hit “Smokey Joe’s Café” — Jardine rewrote the lyrics with permission from Mike Stoller. The final track, “Crumple Car,” is a folk-flavored take on an obscure track from John Milius’ 1978 surfing movie Big Wednesday.

Jardine will take fellow Beach Boys’ co-founder Brian Wilson‘s solo band — rechristened the Pet Sounds Band — on tour this summer, and is planning to play the EP’s title track onstage. The setlists will otherwise mix Beach Boys hits with songs from Seventies albums 15 Big Ones, The Beach Boys Love You, and M.I.U Album, which will be re-released in a box set later this year. “There’s a lot of material to draw from that people haven’t heard before,” Jardine told Rolling Stone. “And we’re going to have some fun.”

Al Jardine and The Pet Sounds Band Tour Dates
July 4 — Lake, MN @ Mystic Amphitheater at Mystic Lake Casino Hotel
July 18 — Cohasset, MA @ South Shore Music Circus
July 23 — Phoenix, AZ @ Musical Instrument Museum
July 24 — Phoenix, AZ @ Musical Instrument Museum
Aug. 23 — Des Plaines, IL @ The Des Plaines Theatre
Aug. 24 — St. Charles, IL @ The Arcada Theatre
Sept. 5 — Atlantic City, NJ @ Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa
Sept. 7 — Concord, NY @ Chubb Theatre at Capitol Center for the Arts