Neil Young has released an album nearly every year of his four-decade career and this year will be no exception. The legendary guitarist/singer/songwriter, who turns 65 in November, shows no signs of slowing down as he prepares to add to his extensive oeuvre with the upcoming release of his inspired and ambitious new record, Le Noise. The follow-up to 2009s Fork in the Road features Young performing a collection of eight new songs on acoustic and electric guitars without percussion, keyboards, strings or other instrumental accompaniment. Le Noise is Neil Young stripped down to nothing but his signature falsetto/tenor and guitar, recorded and amplified by soundscapes wiz, Daniel Lanois. The result is a bald experiment in sound. A purist’s dream.
Young set out to make a solo acoustic album when he called up his friend and collaborator Lanois, who has worked with artists ranging from U2 and Bob Dylan to Willie Nelson and Peter Gabriel, but never with Young. The two men cut the new album earlier this year in Lanois’ home studio, an early 20th century mansion overlooking Silver Lake in California, recording only on nights when there was a full moon as the superstitious Young says it’s when he does his best work. For a little added mojo, Neil broke out his infamous big white electric Gretsch guitar for the occasion, which he used to record some of his most famous records in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. But Lanois (yes, the album title is a wink to the producer) had a surprise waiting for Young when he walked into the studio for the first time. He handed the singer an electro/acoustic guitar that he’d spent years perfecting. With its acoustic, electronica and bass sounds, the tricked-out guitar sounded like a small orchestra. “I wanted to give him something he’d never heard before," says Lanois. "He picked up that instrument and knew when 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 ‘n’ roll, but I think we did it.” Ever the enthusiastic experimenter, Young says the guitar “sounded like God.”
What began as a simple acoustic record ultimately became something way beyond what either Young or Lanois could've imagined. Whether it was the guitar, the setting, or the phase of the moon, Le Noise is one of Young’s finest, most intimate and yes, weirdest recordings, and that’s saying a lot considering the eco-opera Greendale and the songs about alternative fuel on Fork in the Road. The austerity of the album makes you feel like you’re listening in on songs that are on the verge of creation as this master songwriter revisits themes that have obsessed him for decades: making love last beyond the first rush of romance, the ecological fate of the planet, his search for redemption and clarity, and the heartbreak of mortality. (Young suffered the losses of two close friends in the last year — filmmaker Larry “L.A.” Johnson, whom Young met at Woodstock and who had worked with him on his film Journey Through the Past, and steel guitarist and core band member Ben Keith.) The mood of Le Noise is mostly reflective and somewhat eerie when Young’s warm, gentle vocals and guitar are remixed and enhanced by Lanois’ sonics. Young calls the result folk-metal.
The forthcoming album has a track list that includes songs like the electrified reverie of “Walk with Me”; the Spanish-guitar accompaniment of “Love and War,” where Young once again tries to make sense of the high cost of armed conflict; the combative “Angry World,” which examines the many varied paths Young sees people on in this world; the acoustic guitar-driven "Peaceful Valley Boulevard," which takes the listener on a journey through the American frontier that’s always fascinated Young; and “Hitchhiker,” where Young chronicles his life through a string of abusive episodes with drugs. Le Noise is a craggy rock album that bristles with energy and raw emotion. "There's nothing out there like it," says Lanois.
Le Noise drops on September 28th. It will be issued as a standard CD, vinyl, digital download, and as a deluxe CD/DVD set. The DVD portion, which showcases Young performing each of the album’s eight songs, will also be released as a Blu-Ray in November.
Neil Young and his record label have also been digging through the vaults for material for his massive Archives multiyear box set project. Volume 1 of the set, which covers the years 1963-1972, was released in June 2009 and includes music from Young’s early years with The Squires and Buffalo Springfield as well as cuts, demos, outtakes and alternate mixes from his albums Neil Young, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After the Gold Rush, and Harvest. Also included in the set are several live discs, as well as a DVD of the long out-of-print film Journey Through the Past, which was directed by Young in the early 1970s. Volume 2 in the set is due out in 2012 and will span the years 1972 through 1982, one of Young’s most prolific eras.
