Archive for October, 2010

A new noise source ? Yes, LE NOISE !

Saturday, October 2nd, 2010

This week Neil Young released his new CD, with the title “Le Noise”.  As can be expected from Neil, this album is something completely unexpected.  The man plays solo, nothing special about that, but several songs are played with only an electric guitar.  He did this already once with “Mother Earth” several years ago, but then just one song to close a CD.  This Le Noise contains very astonishing music and very great sound, keep in mind that for the first time Neil works together with Daniel Lanois.  The latter is/was producer of many other great artists, as for instance Bob Dylan, U2, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, Talking Heads.

On the CD a couple of typical Neil songs can be found : “Angry World” is about the world of banks and money, while “Love and War” is another song against violence and the cruel things that happen around the world.  The rumor goes that all songs are recorded during the nights of full moon in the house of Daniel Lanois …. 

Over the last couple of months Neil Young lost several of his old friends, e.g. L.A. Johnson passed away, the one who produced Neil’s movie “Journey through the past” in the early 70’s.  Ben Keith unexpectedly died, Neils steel guitarist who was working with Neil since Harvest in 1972.  Neil very often called Ben “My Brother”.  Also Neil’s guitar technician, Larry Cragg is not longer joining Neil on his tours.  I do not know what happened to Larry who was working for over 40 years with and for Neil Young.  It is surprising that Neil did not include some tribute to his great friends on the new album.  Although he recently wrote a very nice song for L.A. Johnson, called “You Never Call”, but it is not included on Le Noise. 

I have no idea how many unreleased songs Neil must have in his library at this ranch, but for sure a lot.  And he has the good habit of regularly grabbing some of the older, unreleased material and put that on one of his new albums.  Also this time “Hitchhiker” founds its way to Le Noise.  The first attempts to write Hitchhiker date back into the ’70s, and since the early 90’s Neil included Hitchhiker in a couple live shows.  Great song, great voice, great guitarplay.  For those interested to get some goose bumps, check out :

http://pitchfork.com/tv/#/musicvideo/8384-neil-young-hitchhiker-reprise

Thanks Neil, thanks Old Black (although he plays most of the songs on White Gretsch 😉 !

Albert 2010-10-02