The steady decline in sales of Neil Young's recent albums - climaxing in the colossal commercial flop of his long-awaited, oft-delayed Archives box - shows that even hard-cores have grown tired of both his mostly subpar 2000s releases and his market saturation. Not immune, I did the unthinkable with Le Noise - for the first time, I did not buy a Young album automatically. Instead, I streamed it on NPR, where Young generously offered it for free - seemingly daring unprecedentedly critical fans to dislike it. I can thankfully say that I was very pleasantly surprised, deciding that, poverty be damned, I had to have it, too.
Le Noise is by far Young's best album since Greendale - and as I seemed to be one of the few who loved that, it will be the best since Harvest Moon for most. Young has certainly written his best set of unrelated songs since that album and is near top form musically and vocally. He also seems to have been revitalized by legendary producer Daniel Lanois. Lanois is one of the few producers with a vast influence on the sound of albums he oversees, and his trademarks are unmistakable. This unsurprisingly makes him someone people either love or hate. I happen to love him, but even those who dislike him violently may be surprised by this, which is noticeably different from anything he has done though still bearing some signatures. I was skeptical of his claims that the album has a truly revolutionary sound, but he does not exaggerate. Young clearly would not have sounded thus without him, but Young also seems to push Lanois into new territory, creating something startlingly fresh. I was also worried on hearing that this is a true solo album, Young being the only musician and almost entirely on electric guitar. This could - and has - worked brilliantly on acoustic, but electric seemed a different matter. However, though the two acoustic cuts are the best, making one wish for more, electric ones mostly hold up. Young has always been a ferocious electric guitarist - again basically a love-him-or-hate-him type -, and this is about as wild and loud as he has ever been. Those always turned off to his proto-punk/thrash will not be converted, but listeners who have always loved it will be enchanted to hear it in a new way. A Young live album infamously begins with an audience member shouting, "It all sounds the same!" and Young ingenuously replying, "It's all the same song." It still is in the sense that those who have always loved this long-time side of the supremely multi-faceted artist will still love it, but it also sounds impossibly fresh - a delightful paradox only Young could pull off. Lanois will likely not convert age-old antagonists either but did craft a truly in-your-face sound that really rocks in a way no one has ever quite done. He also must be credited for coaxing an extraordinary range of sounds from Young's lone electric guitar, especially considering that there are no overdubs. It at times sounds nearly acoustic and at other times seems positively menacing - not just loud but expansive, seemingly all-encompassing. Lanois also draws out bass and percussive sounds to a seemingly unbelievably degree. Finally, whatever else one thinks of him, he does one thing undeniably right by recording Young's vocals clearly and putting them upfront, the lack of which has always been a problem on Young's louder records.
All this may seem to slight Young himself, but he is unquestionably the star. His vocals are very strong - far more so than most singers his age. He has lost little range and perhaps no emotion, also thankfully sparing us recent albums' painfully bad falsetto. His electric playing is the showcase, but he also reminds us that he has long been one of rock's best acoustic guitarists. He is as strong as ever here, even throwing in unprecedented flamenco flourishes on "Love and War." The only thing missing are the extended electric solos of yore that he has sadly shied away from recently.
This overwhelming enthusiasm is not to say that Le is without significant flaws, and it certainly does not stand with Young's best work. For starters, it begins slowly, the first two cuts being the kind Young has seemingly thrown off too often recently: short with uninteresting vocals; asinine, hardly rhyming words; and no real melodies. I despaired on hearing them, thinking the album would be as bad as I feared. However, it picks up on song three and never really heads back south. Lack of variety is arguably another problem. The acoustic tracks are well-placed to avoid monotony, as several electric ones sound very similar, but a little more sonic texture would have been nice. Also, several Lanois touches are frustrating even for this long-time fan, specifically the annoyingly repetitive vocal bits at the beginning and end of a few songs. More fundamentally, the album is woefully short at 38 minutes, which is simply inexcusable in 2010.
Since the songs essentially sound like each other and, acoustic ones aside, like nothing else, Le is that truly rare thing in music today - an album that is meant as an album and works as one. It holds up well in this way but also has definite highlights.
"Walk With Me" and "Sign of Love" do a good job of introducing Le's basic sound but are otherwise forgettable. Putting them together, especially at the front, was not the best idea, as they reinforce each other's mediocrity and make an unfortunately underwhelming start.
With the first interesting riff, much better lyrics, and a full-fledged vocal, "Someone's Gonna Rescue You" is significantly better even if it is the first of several songs that might have worked better with a band.
"Love and War" is an acoustic cut of the kind only Young can do and comes as a nice contrast. An exemplar of the confessional singer/songwriter genre that Young has always epitomized, it is highly moving and even thought-provoking. Nakedly autobiographical yet almost self-mocking and also deeply searching, it has the kind of self-references and sentimentality that would be trite or even corny if sung by anyone else but almost brings as tear as Young sings it. Fans of his acoustic side will love it. This is the kind of thing that Prairie Wind tried so hard for but almost fully lacked.
"Angry World" is the best electric cut so far but seems somewhat incomplete. It has very interesting lyrics and an intriguing vocal but should have been expanded and would have almost certainly been better with a band, though the solo riffing is remarkably hard-core.
"Hitchhiker" was previously heard on the Harvest Moon tour as a solo acoustic piece. Diehards bemoaned its exclusion from 2009's Dreamin' Man live album but thankfully did not have to wait long. Some may prefer the first version, but it is very hard to fault this; the arrangement works, and the song has truly found a home. In another example of the kind of song only he could get away with, Young gives a somewhat surreal, mildly self-mocking autobiography, complete with a list of drugs he has done and when he did them. Both hilarious and tragic, it is one of the few songs that can make one both laugh and (at least nearly) cry.
The acoustic epic "Peaceful Valley Boulevard" is the album's masterpiece, Young's best new song since...well, Harvest Moon. The playing is lovely and the vocal caressingly touching. A thoughtful tribute to nature's supremacy and humanity's hubris in thoughtlessly and selfishly destroying it, "Peaceful" is Young at his lyrical best. At once philosophical and political, it deftly moves from image to carefully constructed image with masterful evocation. I have been waiting for years - seemingly almost decades - for Young to write a song like this and had almost given up. This proudly takes its stand beside masterworks like "Thrasher" and "Pocahontas."
"Rumblin'" is an excellent, highly atmospheric closer. One would have to look quite hard to find a better example of vocal, lyrical, and musical melding. An incisive implication of human arrogance and the price we may soon have to pay, the song closes the album with an almost literal bang.
In short, this is the album most fans have been clamoring for. One should certainly have Young's top-tier work first, but anyone really interested in him - especially those who have been recently disappointed - should embrace this as unexpected treasure.
Product Description
This eight-song album is a collaboration between the acclaimed rock icon and musician, songwriter, and producer Daniel Lanois, known for his work with U2, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, The Neville Brothers and many others. As producer or co-producer Lanois won Grammy Awards in 1987, 1992, 1997, 2000, and 2001.
Young and Lanois have crossed paths musically over the course of many years, including Lanois' performances at Young's Bridge School Benefit Concert and Young's performance at Farm Aid when Lanois was Willie Nelson's music director, but this is the first time the two have recorded together. Recorded in Lanois' home in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles, ‘Le Noise’ features Young on acoustic and electric guitars with Lanois adding his trademark sonic textures, creating one of the most sonically arresting albums Young has ever recorded. No band, no overdubs, just ‘a man on a stool and me doing a nice job on the recording,’ as Lanois puts it.
‘Neil was so appreciative of the sonics that we presented to him,’ Lanois says. ‘He walked in the door and I put an acoustic guitar into his hands - one that I had been working on to build a new sound. That's the multi-layered acoustic sound that you hear on the songs 'Love and War' and 'Peaceful Valley Boulevard.' I wanted him to understand that I've spent years dedicated to the sonics in my home and that I wanted to give him something he'd never heard before. He picked up that instrument, which had everything - an acoustic sound, electronica, bass sounds - and he knew as soon as he played it that we had taken the acoustic guitar to a new level. It's hard to come up with a new sound at the back end of 50 years of rock and roll, but I think we did it.’
Track Listing (Click for download MP3)
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