Neil Young - Le Noise (2010)

http://www.americansongwriter.com/2010/08/neil-young-dubs-next-album-le-noise/

Neil Young Dubs Next Album Le Noise
By Evan Schlansky on August 20th, 2010

Have you been on Neil Young’s Facebook page today? If so, you’ve seen this message:

“Le Noise” is complete. It is a solo record. Playbacks are happening now. Release date is September 28th. It will be available in Vinyl, CD and I tunes in the first edition, followed by Blu-Ray, and an APP for I-Phone and I-Pad a month or so later. The app will be free. It gives you an interactive album cover. Forgive my use of the word “album”. I am old school. When you buy the songs/movies from I- tunes they show up in your APP. Peace ny

The new album was produced by superstar producer Daniel Lanois (U2, Bob Dylan), who reportedly convinced Young not to name the album Twisted Road, after his recent solo tour, which included a stop in Nashville. Many of the songs that are presumably on the album were road tested during that trek.

Young is about to launch another tour in September, to bring aid and awareness to the oil-stricken Gulf Coast.

Neil may be my favorite crazy old man

I just got the album title's pun.

Lanois/Le Noise

le noise = lanois, i take it? har.

oh xpost

anyhoo, anticipating! glad it's coming out so soon.

haha

and speaking of noise, in the pfork jim jarmusch/atp interview, he says he asked neil to do some kind of "feedback war" with thurston moore for ATP, but neil couldn't do it. too bad!

Hope there's a new Crazy Horse record called Al Beanie next year.

I dunno how many around here are of the same opinion as I am, but I'm really looking forward to hearing Neil filtered through the Lanois production machine.

might be the first neil joint to please meh

I loved Wrecking Ball and Oh Mercy, so I'm excited.

oh mercy is a classic, but i distrust lanois a lot of the time.

i think i've only heard wrecking ball once; i guess it was okay.

Wrecking Ball has such a wonderful atmosphere. If I had to pick a best example of Lanois' production style, that would probably be it.

And on that note, I'd love for Emmylou Harris to work with him again. Maybe Emmylou and Neil together with Lanois at the boards.

^I'd love to see this in my lifetime...

We really differ then, cuz Wrecking Ball is a well-intentioned snooze to my ears. As much as I love Harris' harmonies and backup vocals, she has no business singing lead.

what do you have against snoozing

it's nice to snooze

I'll defend So and Achtung Baby and that Neville Bros record to the death, but it was after the successive release of Wrecking Ball, Willie's Teatro, and Dylan's Time Out of Mind that Lanois' sinuous seven-guitars-bleating-through-a-fog mixes made me vomit.

This Young-Lanois sounds like a fantastic misfire at worst. I'm looking forward to Young working with a "real" producer.

As much as I love Harris' harmonies and backup vocals, she has no business singing lead.

This is maybe the most fucked up thing I've ever seen you write.

Well, sorry. Jennifer Warnes has no business singing lead. Hers and Harris' fantastic talent is for being supporting players; they're colorless by themselves. In Harris' case Lanois' production accentuated this.

I'd rather listen to nothing but Time Out of Mind for the rest of my life, while being tortured with knives, than ever hear Achtung Baby again, so we're even

"So Cruel" vs "To Make You Feel My Love"

i kinda like time out of mind. dylan's dylan-ness saves the day, ultimately.

TOOM isn't terrible, just underwritten, allowing Lanois to hold sway. I prefer LVT and MT.

Every time Neil's worked with a name producer and/or band (Booker T, Danny Kortchmar) it's been some kind of disaster. He's been consistent in a decent sort of way the last ten years though, so we'll see.

Oh man I'd be a happy camper if this was his Landing On Empty II.

Are You Passionate Too? would suck though

"Let's Roll" might have worked if he'd recorded it like "Pressure" or "Hippie Dream," I guess.

More Freedom
Raggeder Glory
Everybody's Still Rockin'

I'm listening to Neil Young, I gotta turn up the sound
Someone's always yellin', "Turn him down"

Man, I fucking love both Emmylou Harris and Jennifer Warnes as lead vocalists.

Older Ways
Twoma
More American Stars & Bars
re.re.act.or

DTattered Glory.

*Tattered Glory

Well, if nothing else, the cover art is definitely an improvement over his last several albums:

http://i35.tinypic.com/fjdytu.jpg

reminds me vaguely of

http://www.jezebelmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/mazzy-star_she-hangs-brightly-300x300.jpg

which is some of my favorite album cover design ever

love this cover!

http://991.com/newGallery/Richard-Thompson-Henry-The-Human-F-256904.jpg

Here's the tracklist. Only 8 songs, but I'm hoping more for quality rather than quantity:

1. “Walk With Me”

2. “Sign Of Love”

3. “Someone’s Gonna Rescue You”

4. “Love And War”

5. “Angry World”

6. “Hitchhiker”

7. “Peaceful Valley Boulevard”

8. “Rumblin”

ha! crazy that "hitchhiker" is actually on the album. he's been playing it on this current tour (along with some of these other tracks). is this the longest Neil's ever waited to put out a song? I think hitchhiker was originally written in 1977 or something.

"I'm hoping more for quality rather than quantity"

always good to hope

well even if it's bad, that means there's less bad

always good to hope

Yeah, whatever I was thinking at the time didn't exactly come across as intended.

dunno, the more i think about this, the more excited I get -- I'll probably be disappointed but oh well. I just think that Neil did his best work with David Briggs, an egotistical, opinionated producer. Not that Briggs and Lanois are comparable aesthetically, but Lanois is definitely opinionated! He would probably be OK with telling Neil something wasn't working.

he can bring the best producer on earth, but as long as his songwriting ability isn't as good as it used to be - it would be impossible to make a really good record.

true enough! the songs he's been playing live sound good, though.

the new songs sound really good on the Albany boot, at least! I'm excited about this.

man that album cover is awesome

omg is that the band that did that horrible "world of human wreckage" song? my neighbor in college had their cd and played it over and over and over when he was not blasting sarah mclachlan and having loud sex.

i still can't believe bert jansch! what a bunch of lucky ducks get to see that show.

The first time I saw Neil was on the Ragged Glory Social D/Sonic Youth/Crazy Horse bill. It was awesome. It was also interesting to see how the crowds overlapped, Venn diagram-like.

Since then I've lucked out of seeing him with annoying openers, like opping a pretty strong Farm Aid '98 bill, say. I somehow missed Phish that day, who did "Down by the River" with Neil, but I think I did catch Wilco, Brian Wilson, Steve Earle and Del McCoury, Mellencamp and Willie Nelson with Lanois plus the Cuban drummers. Want to say the most memorable thing about Neil that night - and he was good! - was that he had a full beard!

Oh, wait, now I know why I missed Phish. They went last, so I got the fuck out of there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YK_XPZ_Xhg

Look at the beard! Listen to how shitty a backing band Phish is!

omg is that the band that did that horrible "world of human wreckage" song? my neighbor in college had their cd and played it over and over and over when he was not blasting sarah mclachlan and having loud sex.

i still can't believe bert jansch! what a bunch of lucky ducks get to see that show.

― deez m'uts (La Lechera), Friday, May 6, 2011 10:39 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the one and the same! also that "sixteen candles down the draaaaaiin...thE DRAAAAAAAAIIIIN" song

xp haaa, that sounds ok. hard to really mess up that song. beard is impressive. he's kind of unrecognizable. does the bassist in phish play like an 80-string bass?

oh yeah, I saw him at that Farm Aid too! I thought the Phish jam with Neil was pretty cool at the time, though I've not heard it since. Mellencamp was the real wreck that day, with rappers doing a stint on "Jack and Diane".

josh, i saw that show at the rosemont horizon. maybe we were there together as lil' tykes?

No, I saw mine in Philly at the time. At a much smaller place than the Rosemont Horizon, I want to say. Civic Center?

Mellencamp's been rudderless since he fired his classic line-up.

It looks like in that video that Trey from Phish doesn't know the song - THAT song! - and is sort of hanging on for dear life. They blow. Sometimes I think the reputation of Crazy Horse as Neil's just right "wrong" band is overblown until I hear a band like Phish that has no feeling, no soul. I mean, listen to this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O1v_7T6p8U&feature=player_embedded#at=41

wow that phish clip is terrible, that bassist doesn't know what the he's doing!

too many strings. i don't think you actually need strings on your bass to play down by the river.

Too many strings will be the end of us all.

That Neil clip, btw, is just how I remember the crowd that night.

My guitar teacher, btw, loves to point out how hard it is to play "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere"-erta Neil songs "right" because Crazy Horse's bassist keeps hitting bad notes.

i kinda wonder if he's been jamming for so long that being able to hit the really obvious "bum bum.....bleedle dee....bum bum" stuff on down by the river seems like speaking latin to him now

yeah the weld video has kind of amazing audience shots...

& yeah phish bassist is prob like "oh shit how can i work in some jaco licks in here?"

forgot how awesome the crowd shots on weld are xp

wish i could find my bootleg dvd of that movie...

is it not on dvd? my friend had the vhs which we must've watched 50 times in high school

off topic but csince this is the neil young thread of the day
http://soul-sides.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/heart-of-gold1.mp3
excerpt of what sounds like a pretty sweet soul heart of gold cover. never heard it before!

o i guess it is actually a new thing -- daptone, go figure.

Wow, I really dig that!

yeah it sounds cool

I didn't even realize it was Charles Bradley - I've been digging his album a lot.

Funnily enough, he's only discussed at all on the De Subjectivisten board here - but that "No Time for Dreaming" LP is really great; one of the best throwback soul albums in a while.

cool, i haven't really delved too deep into the daptone catalog, here's the link for the heart of gold thang
http://daptonerecords.11spot.com/index.php?fuseaction=item_cat.ecom_superitem_detail&item_cat_id=6032

i just saw bradley and bought that 45! great stuff

yeah just bought the whole thing -- really good.
along the same lines, if you haven't grabbed it, here's my comp of eclectic neil covers: http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/4007851187/hello-mr-soul-more-neil-young-for-your-monday
my faves are the soul ones -- merry clayton, meters, etc

one of my fave mixes ever. prolly the one that i have inadvertently gotten the most cred for, too---i throw something from it on like every mix i make

yeah, i really enjoy it, too. need to do a ol. 2 at some point.

You know, back to that video and those crowd shots, I almost want to say back when "Ragged Glory" came out Neil Young - even post-"Freedom" - hadn't quite clicked again as a hip icon, and that he still attracted a real rogue's gallery of fans. Like, when I saw Johnny Cash after "Unchained" came out, in the tiny House of Blues here, I want to say the crowd was all old guys with beards; his comeback still hadn't quite connected on a mass level. Same with Bob Dylan, I want to say. And same with Neil for a while. Like, growing up, I didn't know anybody - like, ANYbody - that listened to Neil, Cash or Dylan. At all. But someone should please correct me if they remember better than I do. I'm talking late '80s, early '90s.

well, i was still a high school kid in the mid 80s. i had stoner friends who were big into pink floyd, dylan, the dead, neil young, etc. along with more modern stuff, but in spokane, WA, at least, the 70s persisted big time. seemed that was still the case when i went off to college in olympia. lots of punks, but lots of throwback hippie rockers, too. king crimson, sabbath, mahavishnu, hendrix. and cash was always a token "cool country guy," if you went in for that kind of thing.

in the northwest, at least, there wasn't such a clear division between then and now, between hippie throwback and postpunk modern.

Late 80s, early 90s, all my friends listened to Neil & Bob, but not Cash. I'm talking post-Freedom but only b/c before Freedom I wasn't really buying music yet, was only barely a teen at that point. We were definitely not particularly hip, being middle school/early high school students, but Neil & Bob & in general the big 60s acts had much cache amongst people who cared about music in my high school. This was in the deep South (GA in particular), fwiw, where REM, Drivin' N Cryin', the Connells, etc., ruled.

Interesting. I think maybe I didn't have enough hippie friends. Most of my friends (late '80s, early '90s HS, outside Philly) were either punk fans, "college rock"/nascent alt-rock fans (spanning the Cure to Sonic Youth) or metalheads.

I saw pre-rubinized cash at a state college gymnasium in the early 90s (near philly to boot!). after the show he came out and hung out by the merch table lol. I was a big fan but it was pretty much the state fair crowd at that point.

I remember dinosaur getting compared to young a lot when they came out in the mid 80s. I think neil had some appreciation from indie folks at the time but for stuff like zuma and tonight's the night, not whatever he was doing currently.

I bought a cash trucker hat at that show, wore it to a lot of gigs in the early 90s, and I would invariably get "cool hat" comments. some ppl prolly thought I was being ironic indie guy tho.

yeah, in the late 80s i was getting a lot of mileage out of live rust, not so much freedom or the like

i was pretty young at that point (got into neil right around ragged glory), but i imagine he always had a certain amount of cred -- like with dinosaur or meat puppets or feelies, etc. just that his 80s records probably made him seem a little washed up. still, as far as boomer icons go, he probably has always had one of the more diverse (relatively speaking) audiences...

feels like young has always been 'hip' except for a few years in the mid-80's (around freedom and this note's for you). he certainly got that sonic youth/grunge reappraisal very quickly come the 90's. shee's that's been 20 years now. wtf.

ragged glory's about as close timewise to his debut as we are to ragged glory now.

Saw Neil on the Freedom tour, acoustic solo, with my dad and uncle. Indigo Girls opened.

I was at the Neil show with Sonic Youth and Social D at the Rosemont Horizon. Sonic Youth had just been to Chicago a few months before with Public Enemy at the Aragon, and a riot had broken out afterward. Thurston said "Last time we were here some kids got beat up ... this song is for them" and they opened with "Tom Violence"

I think I mentioned this on some other Neil thread once, but that show was also notable as the first and only time I've ever seen an artist do an encore with the lights on. They did their set, left the stage, came back and did a couple encores, and left again. Then the lights came on. That's supposed to be the signal that "that's it folks, show's over." But people just would not leave, every one was standing and chanting for Neil, and eventually they came back out and played "Welfare Mothers" with the lights on. Too fucking cool.

I dunno tho, maybe it was a planned ahead that they would do that? Josh, do you remember anything similar at the Philly show?

saw Neil and the Horse on the H.O.R.D.E. tour, so I guess you could say Beck was the opener, along with a bunch of bands I don't remember at all. also with Wilco as the opener a couple years back.

I don't think he had an opener on the 'Chrome Dreams II' tour? can't remember

It was Pegi.

think neil had some appreciation from indie folks at the time but for stuff like zuma and tonight's the night, not whatever he was doing currently.

the "godfather of grunge" tag coincided with Ragged Glory iirc and he got a lot of mileage out of younger listeners with that (me and tyler included, evidently)

And then of course he toured/recorded with Pearl Jam. But before grunge (and, upon their more mainstream post-grunge breakthroughs) bands like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur specifically, helped connect him to the alt-kids, was Neil Young really held up like a hip totem? C. "Ragged Glory," maybe. But before that? Circa "Freedom?" I should dig up the (five star?) RS review, which I don't think made any effort to connect him to any younger contemporaries in the way that reviews of "Ragged Glory" most certainly did.

I stand sort of corrected:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/freedom-19891102

Looks like Fricke's review was in tandem with "The Bridge" tribute, which I forget came this early. Though amusingly Fricke cites Young as a major influence on rock in the '80s, totally unaware of what was right around the corner.

As with Rust and Everybody Knows — and with other contentious classics like On the Beach, Tonight's the Night and Re*ac*tor — Neil Young's tour of Freedom's wasteland leaves you feeling both exhausted and invigorated, dismayed at what we've wrought yet determined to set it right.

ONE OF THESE IS NOT LIKE THE OTHERS.

eventually they came back out and played "Welfare Mothers" with the lights on. Too fucking cool.

i've lately begun to appreciate just how motherfucking insane the weld version of this is: just unhinged distorted black noise and a kind-of-unpleasant, what-is-neil-actually-saying-here? nastiness and weirdness that's totally exhilarating. blows my mind.

well hmm http://ultimateclassicrock.com/neil-young-sign-of-love-dave-grohl-song-review/
le noise track with dave grohl on drums...

sounds pretty cool!

think the review is wrong about there not being different guitar parts. vocal sounds the same, but there are definitely some overdubs guitar-wise.