September 24, 2010
Album Review: Neil Young - Le Noise (Reprise)
The potential is lost beneath endlessly unconvincing soundscapes
4 / 10
Daniel Lanois’ sonic burble trick-switch may well have worked many times on The Edge’s pedal-frazzled guitar lines, but the beauty of Neil Young’s primal proto-grunge is its relentless, simplistic chug. That was well to the fore when Young debuted some of these songs on his well-received Twisted Road tour this summer but, in the studio, producer Lanois has removed their urgency almost completely. On what could have been his most fired-up album in years, Young ends up smothered by unconvincing soundscapes on all but two acoustic tunes that stand out by virtue of actually not sounding like a hurricane.
Jason Draper
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