Neil Young Drops Free Concert Film ‘Corduroy Plants’ on Neil Young Archives

The hourlong film, directed by Daryl Hannah, accompanies the live LP ‘As Time Explodes’ and was released without any promotional campaign.

Neil Young has released a free, hourlong concert film called Corduroy Plants on the Neil Young Archives, arriving quietly a couple of months after the live LP As Time Explodes, which documented his 2025 summer tour with the Chrome Hearts. Directed by his wife, Daryl Hannah, the 11-song film was posted without a press release, social media push, or any formal announcement, leaving fans to discover it on their own.

What’s in ‘Corduroy Plants’

The film covers most of the songs from As Time Explodes but omits two tracks from that live record: ‘After the Gold Rush’ and ‘Looking Forward.’ Hannah directs with a documentary sensibility, periodically cutting away from stage footage to interweave clips drawn from recent news events and moments throughout history.

The visual pairings are pointed. During the Greendale track ‘Be the Rain,’ footage of the destruction of the East Wing of the White House appears alongside brief clips of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. ‘Vampire Blues’ is paired with footage of devastating oil spills. Migrant workers are shown toiling in fields during ‘Like a Hurricane,’ and images of World War II and the Holocaust accompany ‘Cortez the Killer,’ along with footage of more recent conflicts.

The approach is consistent with Young’s long-standing practice of using his music as a vehicle for political and social commentary. Hannah has directed several of his recent films, and the visual language here extends that collaboration into territory that is explicitly confrontational.

Released Without Fanfare, by Design

The absence of any promotional apparatus around Corduroy Plants is deliberate. Young has stepped away from most social media platforms because of their connections to the Trump administration, rarely grants interviews, and did not issue a press release for the film. Fans who found it did so by checking the Neil Young Archives directly.

For an artist of Young’s stature, that kind of release strategy is genuinely unusual. Most legacy acts treat a concert film as a marketing event, complete with trailer rollouts and streaming platform deals. Young’s decision to post it for free, without ceremony, fits a pattern he has maintained for years of prioritizing direct access for his audience over commercial positioning.

Archives Volume 4 and New Studio Album on the Way

Young also updated fans on the Neil Young Archives box set series. The first three volumes covered 1963-72, 1972-76, and 1976-87. Volume 4 will extend the story through the end of the Greendale tour in 2004. Young wrote that ‘Volume 4 of the Archives is underway, entering the completion phase for all songs we have uncovered over the last two or three years.’

Separately, Young has recorded a new studio album with the Chrome Hearts called Second Song, tracked at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La studios in Malibu, California. The material is described as largely brand-new, but the record also includes two or three songs Young wrote around 1963-64 that have never been released.

Young had originally planned a European tour this summer with the Chrome Hearts but pulled those dates without fully explaining why. He did surface on May 22 for a surprise four-song set at David Suzuki’s 90th-birthday concert in Vancouver. He is also scheduled to appear at Farm Aid on September 26 in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Corduroy Plants Setlist

The film draws from the As Time Explodes live LP and runs 11 songs. The following tracks are represented, with ‘After the Gold Rush’ and ‘Looking Forward’ the only omissions from the album:

• Be the Rain
• Vampire Blues
• Like a Hurricane
• Cortez the Killer

What we know

• Corduroy Plants is a free, hourlong, 11-song concert film available on the Neil Young Archives.
• The film was directed by Daryl Hannah, Young’s wife, who has directed several of his recent films.
• Corduroy Plants accompanies the live LP As Time Explodes, which documents Young’s 2025 summer tour with the Chrome Hearts.
• The film omits ‘After the Gold Rush’ and ‘Looking Forward’ from the As Time Explodes track listing.
• Young released the film without a press release, social media campaign, or promotional effort of any kind.
• Neil Young Archives Volume 4 is in progress and will cover through the end of the Greendale tour in 2004.
• A new studio album called Second Song, recorded with the Chrome Hearts at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La studios in Malibu, California, is forthcoming.
• Second Song includes two or three previously unheard songs Young wrote circa 1963-64.

The take

Neil Young has spent the better part of two decades building the Neil Young Archives into something with no real parallel in rock: a living, self-managed vault where he controls the release cadence, the pricing (often free), and the context around his work. Corduroy Plants fits squarely into that model. By bypassing streaming platforms, publicists, and social media entirely, Young keeps the relationship between his output and his audience unusually direct. There is no algorithm deciding who sees it.

The pairing of archival and news footage with live performance is also a Hannah-Young signature at this point. Their earlier collaborations, including films tied to the Crazy Horse era, used similar techniques to push the music into explicitly political territory. What makes Corduroy Plants notable is the specificity of the imagery: the White House, Musk, Bezos, oil spills, the Holocaust. Young has never been subtle about his politics, but the visual language here is more confrontational than most legacy artists would risk.

The news about Second Song is also worth watching closely. Young recording new material with the Chrome Hearts at Shangri-La, with Rick Rubin’s studio as the setting, suggests a working relationship with that band that goes well beyond the 2025 tour. And the inclusion of songs from 1963-64 that have never been heard is the kind of archival discovery that tends to reframe how listeners understand an artist’s early development.

Why it matters

For Classic Rock fans, Corduroy Plants is a reminder that Young remains one of the few artists from his generation who is genuinely prolific and genuinely uncompromising about how he releases work. The free, unannounced drop on his own platform is a rebuke to the standard industry playbook, and it works because the Neil Young Archives has enough of a dedicated audience to make the word spread organically. The combination of a new concert film, an imminent studio album, and a major archival box set in progress makes this one of the more active periods in Young’s recent catalog history.

What’s next

Farm Aid on September 26 in Virginia Beach, Virginia will be Young’s next confirmed major public appearance. The Second Song studio album with the Chrome Hearts, recorded at Shangri-La in Malibu, does not yet have a release date. Neil Young Archives Volume 4, covering through the end of the 2004 Greendale tour, is described as entering its completion phase.

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