In the age of remixes, Oceanside Countryside is like a premix, presenting nearly finished versions of songs that wound up on such albums as Comes a Time, Rust Never Sleeps and Hawks & Doves. 

Recorded in 1977 and promptly shelved, Oceanside Countryside is the latest in Neil Young’s Analog Original Series, with the mixes and running order as planned before Young – as he’s been prone to do throughout his career – changed his mind. 

While the album was nixed, the songs were not, so “Human Highway” and Field of Opportunity” made Comes a Time; “Sail Away” and “Pocahontas” went to Rust Never Sleeps; and “Lost in Space” and “Captain Kennedy” landed on Hawks & Doves. 

“Dance Dance Dance,” which later became “Love is a Rose,” and the non-album track “It Might Have Been” also appear on the LP, which finds Young playing every instrument on the Oceanside and accompanied by a band on the appropriately named Countryside. In that respect, it owes more to 1980’s Hawks & Doves than Comes a Time (1978) or ’79’s Rust Never Sleeps. 

This is not an essential LP for anyone outside the completist circle. But Oceanside Countryside is another key piece of the puzzle for those seeking to make sense of Young’s winding journey through the past to the present.