Music: {allcanada} Hear Neil Young's emotion loud and clear on 'Le Noise'

Monday, September 27, 2010

{allcanada} Hear Neil Young's emotion loud and clear on 'Le Noise'

Neil Young, Le Noise
* * * ½ DIN IS SERVED

"I've tried to leave my past behind, but it's catching up with me," Young sings in a voice both regretful and resigned on this mostly reflective, sometimes angry and cynical musical memoir. The eight songs, performed on acoustic and electric guitar with no band, are gloriously fleshed out by producer Daniel Lanois (Bob Dylan, U2), who recorded the tracks in his 1920s lakeside Los Angeles manse and deployed a battery of surreal effects to inflate and twist Young's ferocious playing.

The result is an intimate self-examination, brimming with humor, warmth, contrition and trepidation, set against an otherworldly roar and drone that begs for a volume setting at max. Haunted and heartfelt, Le Noise transcends its curious pas de deux of Young's earthy-eccentric folk and Lanois' layered, ominous atmospherics. It's Le Noise flambé.

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