The Dublin Sessions

The Dublin Sessions is a posthumous album by American musician Del Shannon which was released on July 7, 2017. He recorded this previously unreleased album in 1977 with his UK-based touring band called Smackee at Ireland's Dublin Sound Studios and was long believed lost.
Edsel Records included this CD in a box set entitled Stranger in Town: A Del Shannon Compendium, which contains 14th of his studio albums and three compilation and was released on February 24, 2023.

Background

Shannon shopped around this 1977 material with no success. By the time he got out of rehab and started working with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on what would become the Petty-produced Drop Down and Get Me, the Dublin material “just sort of fell into the rear-view mirror.” Shannon originally mixed and then remixed the tracks at Cherokee Studios in California but opted to never release them.

Critical reception

Cleveland.com wrote: "Sometimes, when a record label unearths material from the vaults, one listen tells you why it stayed unreleased for so long. Other times, the tracks are good enough to make you wonder how they could have remained in the can until now.