Neil Young's 'Le Noise' review: Acoustic and electric combine in this intriguing amalgam
By Blogger - Friday, October 1, 2010
Every now and then he'll take a fleeting trip off the main road - to the land of country ("Old Ways"), rockabilly ("Everybody's Rockin'"), electronica ("Trans"), or rock opera ("Greendale"). But largely he sticks to either intimate solo pieces or feedback-laden group outbursts.
On "Le Noise," Young finally gives that essential duality a twist. It's his first attempt to reconcile his two main approaches into one. It's a lone-wolf effort, but instead of an acoustic foray it's comprised mostly of raging electric guitar pieces. The result recasts Young's solo folk work as a full-on axe freak-out.
Intrigued?
It gets better. To aid him in this innovative mono/electric amalgam, Young collaborated with Daniel Lanois, a producer well known for recalibrating guitar-rock techniques in his work with U2, Peter Gabriel and others. The result is at once intimate and cacophonous; small and loud.
The opening song, "Walk With Me," has the anchor of a firm tune and a bold riff but it's also abstracted through its cackling, hazy guitar sonics. The sound wavers and shakes but remains clear in its mission.
To increase the effect, Lanois set Young's voice in the vortex of this six-string swirl, blurring it into something ghostly. It intensifies the effect if you hear the music at some distance. Listen from a room away and it seems to call to you.
The strategy proves ideal for a track like "Angry World," which mirrors its title phrase in a sound that's downright ornery.
Not every song holds to the mold. A few revert to solo acoustic form, like the Spanish-inflected ballad "Love and War." If that corrupts the vision some, at least the acoustic tracks don't disappoint.
Several are more directly autobiographical than usual, reaching a peak in "Hitchiker." Here, Young somewhat guiltily summarizes the last 45 years of his life, from his fractured family life to his drug use.
The disk's bigger issue is its relative conservatism. Given the cleverness of the concept, one wishes Young and Lanois went further with it, perhaps integrating some of the wilder feedback dreams Young explored on 1991's experimental live albums "Arc" and "Weld."
At the same time, Young could have opened up these too-terse songs with some of the dissonant guitar forays favored by acts like Sonic Youth, Swans, or "new music" god Rhys Chatham.
At one second shy of 38 minutes, the album can feel a bit stingy. Yet in that time, it nonetheless manages to achieve something significant: It gives one of rock's oldest dogs a new trick.
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