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Dec 21, 2010There are no enduring classics here like the songs on 2007's Live At Massey Hall, or anything to rival the material that helped define late '70s AOR from, say, American Stars 'n Bars or Rust Never Sleeps. But this is a record well worth having, and it's a blessing that we still have enduring artists like Neil Young creating such vital music.
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Oct 28, 2010From its first chord hit and sustained, distortion displacing air, Le Noise courts Neil Young's classic platters.
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Le Noise remains reasonably accessible, Young's lyrics still as appealingly forthright as his playing, his melodies slowly rising through the unsettling, growling dirge.
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It builds a rich sonic arch around Young's voice and guitar, bottling the essence of what makes him such a compelling singer-songwriter at 64.
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The album is full of those kind of unexpected juxtapositions, a stunning statement from an artist who shows no signs of slowing down.
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There are a couple of Young's obligatory, wandering acoustic ditties to water down the already short track list, and Lanois' soft touch seems to render antiseptic even those few moments of feedback and reverb.
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It's not a completely successful experiment, but Le Noise is certainly an important moment in Neil Young's ongoing story.
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What's up with all this defeat? The answers, in no particular order: Because he's Neil Young.
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Underneath that intriguing tinsel, it's just one more late-period Young album, all grungy chords and ghostly falsetto.
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Dec 22, 2010Young's sandblasting electric guitar sits handsomely alone before eerie rumbling atmospheres.
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Le Noise is not an epic -– if it were a book, you could read it in an afternoon -– but it's statement enough from a man who's already said so much.
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Le Noise is the sound of a restless and prolific artist striving to deal with the burden of his great legacy.
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What makes this work so beautifully is that the sound is completely unique and modern and yet couldn't be confused for anyone else.
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Young may be famous for his maelstrom guitar, but in this case the apocalypse sneaks up on us with a whisper, Young's voice steeped in decades of watching the world go to hell.
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By turns mellow and heavy, personal and abstract, Le Noise encapsulates nearly everything that you'd want or need from a Neil Young album, and does so in a novel yet organic way.
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As great as these songs are, how much you love them will rest on how long a leash you're willing to give Young and Lanois with the all ringing, sometimes overbearing, noise they wrap them in.
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Q MagazineTruly one of a kind. [Nov. 2010, p. 117]
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Le Noise is also 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.
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Le Noise is the sound of a singer-songwriter playing to his strengths.
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Le Noise, produced by Daniel Lanois and recorded solo with a reverb-swathed electric guitar, is all about doubt and desperation, and Young is never better than when he's unsure of himself.
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Le Noise demands more effort than some listeners might be willing to put in, but at its best, it repays that effort pretty handsomely. In that sense at least, it pretty much sums up Neil Young's entire career.
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The WireDec 22, 2010The songwriting is at times patchy....But the noise of Le Noise sets it above Young's last few albums. [Nov 2010, p.62]
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Chalk it up to Lanois, near-death experiences, or the wisdom of youth. No matter the cause, this is the Neil Young to embrace.
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UncutThe guitar sounds engineered here by Young and Lanois are astonishing, almost terrifying at times in their elemental beauty. [Nov 2010, p.78]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 14 out of 17
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Mixed: 2 out of 17
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Negative: 1 out of 17
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Dec 2, 2010
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Sep 28, 2010
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Oct 10, 2010