Pete Townshend turns 70 today — happy birthday, Pete! — and the Who member celebrated by putting out “Guantanamo,” a politically minded track that serves as one of two new songs featured on the upcoming solo best-of compilation, Truancy: The Very Best Of Pete Townshend. “I thought this song might never see the light of day, but now [that] President Obama has relaxed sanctions in Cuba, it is a happy sign he might go further,” Townshend said in a statement. Check out the new track below, plus read some more about how it was put together.

Technically this was created in rather a laborious way. I recorded a long organ drone using my vintage Yamaha E70 organ (used many times by me on Who and solo recordings in the past), and then cut it into something that sounded like a song using a feature unique to Digital Performer called ‘chunks.’ This creates blocks of groups of tracks that can be assembled and disassembled easily, like cutting multitrack analogue tape with a razor blade, but with less blood. The lyric grew out of the implicit angry frustration in the organ tracks.

Tracklist:
01 “Pure And Easy”
02 “Sheraton Gibson”
03 “(Nothing Is Everything) Let’s See Action”
04 “My Baby Gives It Away”
05 “A Heart To Hang On To” (w/ Ronnie Lane)
06 “Keep Me Turning” (w/ Ronnie Lane)
07 “Let My Love Open The Door”
08 “Rough Boys”
09 “The Sea Refuses No River”
10 “Face Dances (Pt. 2)
11 “White City FIghting”
12 “Face The Face”
13 “I Won’t Run Anymore”
14 “English Boy”
15 “You Came Back”
16 “Guantanamo” [New Track]
17 “How Can I Help You” [New Track]

Truancy: The Very Best Of Pete Townshend is out 6/29.