Categories : Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 3.5 / 5 Reviewer: Greg Hutton |
Neil Young’s latest effort applies the intimate interaction between a singer and guitar characteristically found on acoustic albums and applies it to an electric onslaught that falls somewhere between soaring and droning. While Young performs on the album largely unaccompanied, Daniel Lanois’s production techniques introduce layers of sound that allow Young’s singular contribution to grow into a seemingly multi-instrumental affair. Lanois’s most striking contribution is a guitar set-up that allows Young to play the rhythmic low-end and melodic high-end simultaneously, separating the two elements into distinct channels and creating the illusion of multiple guitar tracks. These high and low signals are then phased to opposite left and right channels and are consistently laden in reverb, making this very much an album best experienced with headphones. Suffice it to say, describing the guitar-sounds on the album with words is difficult. A more succinct and efficient way of describing the album’s guitars has been posited by Young, who asserts that they sound like God.
Production values aside, the songs on Le Noise include several gems. Opener ‘Walk With Me’ sets the tone of the album beginning with a single chord that is allowed to resonate into a low bass drone, followed by a complement of reverb-soaked, drop-tuned riffs. ‘Love and War,’ one of the only acoustic numbers on the album and one of its strongest, reins in the drone and reverb, thereby creating a strikingly isolated space for Young to ruminate on a career spent writing songs about the title themes. This place of quiet contemplation is the only space on the album where the line “When I sing about love and war I don’t really know what I’m saying,” is allowed its due impact, signalling the singer’s inability to arrive at a clear understanding or draw absolute truths in tackling such weighty subjects. ‘Hitchhiker,’ which Young started playing live as early as 1992, is given an effective treatment here with delayed vocals providing an ethereal quality that is consistent with the numerous drug-experiences recounted in the song.
The only time Lanois’s production overshadows a song to the point of distraction is during ‘Angry World,’ which is a fine exercise in the drop-tuned riffs that characterize the album, but contains vocal loops that begin the song and repeat incessantly throughout.
Le Noise serves as yet another testament to Young’s refusal to stay in one place for long. The songs themselves may not represent Young’s best, nor are they anywhere near his most accessible. But, taken together with Lanois’s production, this record is successful in facilitating an original Neil Young experience.
