NEIL YOUNG

LE NOISE

Album Release Date: September 28, 2010 Neil Young released his brand-new solo album, entitled Le Noise, on September 28th on Reprise Records. The eight-song album is a collaboration between the acclaimed rock icon and musician, songwriter, and producer Daniel Lanois, known for his work with Brian Eno, 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 acoustic 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."

REVIEWS

4 stars - Rolling Stone Magazine, Sept 2010
"...the most intimate and natural-sounding album Young has made in a long time: just a songwriter making his way through a vividly rendered chaos of memoir, affection and fear." - David Fricke

Los Angeles Times
"Every decade since Neil Young launched a solo career in 1968, the Canadian rocker has put out a watershed album with which he's upped the ante for himself. What’s striking about "Le Noise" is the way it both summarizes and distills Young’s singular approach to music. The songs bristle with energy –anger, passion, love, self-doubt, regret, hope –emotions that seem all the more pure expressed without percussion, keyboards, strings of other instruments, just by Young's voice and guitars. ..it’s all the more rewarding to discover he’s delivered yet another craggy rock classic."
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Randy Lewis from the LA times Pop & Hiss Music Blog, Sept 2010
What’s striking about “Le Noise” is the way it both summarizes and distills Young’s singular approach to music, predominantly just Neil and a guitar: his big, white hollow-body Gretsch electric slashing and burning for most of the tracks, a couple built around picked and strummed acoustic instruments. Both are recorded and amplified -- literally and metaphorically -- by Lanois’ signature soundscapes that loop vocals, and enhance the guitars’ bass notes through distortion boxes, synthesizers and other electronics.
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The Boston Globe
"One of Young’s most haunting recent releases"

BuzzBands.Com
"'Le Noise’ is audacious and loud and trippy and layered and blunt. The best 38 minutes you will have spent in quite some time."

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