Send "Neil Young " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Even by his own unpredictable standards, Neil Young's had a pretty contradictory decade. The confusingly titled Chrome Dreams II was one highlight, but some of its best tracks were decades-old. Last year's Fork in the Road was a lark, a neo-concept album about electric cars whose humor undersold Young's convictions. His angriest albums, Living With War and Greendale, were each instantly dated time capsules. His prettiest, Silver & Gold and Prairie Wind, were also pretty disposable, and there are likely about as many people who pull out Are You Passionate? as there are those waiting for a Road Rock Vol. 2.Yet all those subpar, uneven, or just plain odd releases matter, because they show the guy's still trying to bottle whatever it is that's been swimming in his soul for the better part of five full decades. Which brings us to Le Noise, Young's perhaps inevitable team-up with famed producer Daniel Lanois. The album features mostly just Young, electric guitar, and a battery of effects-- echoing, resonating, occasionally roaring, and raging. Not that Young necessarily needs all that. With his sneering warble and ragged but right guitar playing, he's always been his own best effect, but here Young and Lanois relish the happy accidents both producer and artist have always embraced, resisting the urge to sand off the jagged edges into the ambient ether. Of course, ambience is a big part of Le Noise's widescreen appeal, and Young's playing is as intriguingly exploratory as it is sometimes explosive, taking advantage of Lanois' trademark bag of tricks like a kid testing pedals in a guitar store. Still, given its familiar crunch and gait, it's hard to hear Le Noise without imagining the famously ramshackle backing of Crazy Horse anchoring the riffy murk of songs like "Walk With Me", "Sign of Love", "Angry World" or even the queasy, off-kilter "Rumblin'"....full text |
| Guardian |
| It perhaps befits a wilfully contrary artist that a bad review might act as the best advert imaginable for his new album. One august rock critic has already deemed Le Noise, his collaboration with U2 and Dylan producer Daniel Lanois, unlistenable. It's a response that should cause the ears of long-term Young fans to prick up. His worst records don't really incite that kind of violent reaction: they're just boring. Furthermore, someone like him said something like that at every vital moment in Young's career – from David Crosby's spluttering disbelief that he'd abandon CSNY for Crazy Horse, a band that "never should have been allowed to be musicians at all", to the yells of horror that greeted Tonight's the Night, to Graham Nash's response to 1988's return-to-raging-form Eldorado: "I absolutely hate this record." It's hard not to picture the august rock critic huffing away without thinking: "Hmm, this could be interesting." Buy it from Buy the CD Download as MP3 Neil Young Le Noise Reprise 2010 Your interest might be piqued further not so much by Lanois's sonic approach – which largely sets Young's singing against the sound of his own ferociously distorted electric guitar, occasionally looping his voice to unsettling effect – but by the circumstances surrounding the album. While you don't want to wish the old guy any ill, contentment doesn't suit Neil Young, at least artistically. His best work – from 1974's On the Beach to 1995's Sleeps With Angels – has been born out of turmoil, and Le Noise arrives haunted. Filmmaker Larry Johnson, who collaborated with Young for four decades, died suddenly in January, while longstanding sideman Ben Keith died of a heart attack at Young's home in July. Judging by Le Noise's contents, their deaths seem to have simultaneously rattled and re-energised him. Whatever the qualities of his recent fair-to-middling efforts – they all had their moments – his songwriting here sounds more pointed and self-aware than it has in years. "Walk with me," suggests Young on the album opener. A cynical voice – possibly belonging to Crosby, Stills, Nash or another musician who's enjoyed a mercurial relationship with him over the years – might note that this is a fairly resistible offer, given that walking with Neil Young almost invariably ends in Neil Young suddenly buggering off with someone else and abandoning you in the middle of nowhere. But Young is there before you: "I lost some people I was travelling with," he cries, sounding genuinely regretful, as the song dissolves into tumultuous feedback. In recent years, Young has dipped into his vast catalogue of unreleased songs in order to prop up albums of uninspired latterday material, with inevitable results. The 25-year-old Ordinary People was so much better than anything else on Chrome Dreams II that it sparked glum thoughts. Even his material from the 80s – a decade when Young was widely presumed to have gone completely bananas, given that he spent it insisting A Flock of Seagulls were the future of music and worrying that Aids could be transmitted by touching potatoes that had been handled by gay men – was vastly superior to the contemporary stuff....full text |
| Snobsmusic. |
| The great thing about Neil Young is that from record to record you have no idea what you're going to get. When a new album is announced, you wonder will it be the plaintive folk, will it be the angsty feedback-drenched rock, or will it be something completely different. Young's forthcoming album, Le Noise, falls under the completely different category. The iconic producer Daniel Lanois is behind the console for the new album, which sees it's release on September 28th. At first blush the concept seems simple. Lanois records what is merely Young playing songs solo on his guitar. It doesn't end up being that easy though. Lanois coaxes big, dissonant riffs out of Young. On top of that, and sometimes underneath it, he drapes electronic effects and production tricks to provide distortion. It works better than the last time Young dabbled in these kinds of techniques. For the most part the production melds far more seamlessly with the guitar fuzz, making it an accent rather than the focal point. That gives the autobiographical "Hitchhiker" a liberating drone. It also adds another layer of intrigue to "Sign of Love" with its "Downtown" guitar intro....full text |
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