NEIL!

Ben Keith
March 6, 1937-July 26, 2010

BRING THE NOISE (Ben Greenman, The New Yorker, 10/4/2010)

There are at least two Neil Youngs: the gentle, sometimes overly earnest acoustic singer-songwriter and the bone-crushingly loud guitarist who has led bands like Crazy Horse through the most primal rock and roll excursions imaginable. On Young’s new album, “Le Noise” (Reprise), the latter inhabits the former, with bracing results.

The album was produced by Daniel Lanois, best known for his work with U2 (“The Joshua Tree”), Peter Gabriel (“So”), and Bob Dylan (“Oh Mercy” and “Time Out of Mind”). Young has generally produced his own records, or worked with co-producers in his stable, so as not to spook the horse, but here he gives himself over to Lanois (whose name is overtly punned upon in the title). Lanois’s specialty is guitar noise, and there is plenty here. Young is the only performer, but the record is dense with his electric guitar; songs are drenched in feedback and lightly treated with effects. This technique takes lyrics that are often straightforward declarations of love and identity and gives them power. On paper, “Walk with Me” and “Sign of Love” are as simple as haikus; on record, they are complex weather events, full of squalls and swells. When Young stretches his songwriting a bit, the results are even better. “Love and War” is a deconstructed protest song (“When I sing about love and war / I don’t really know what I’m saying”) that opens with delicate Spanish guitar and slides into a menacing riff lifted from Young’s own “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black).” “Angry World” is current in its themes (dishonest banks, disillusioned citizens) but sounds ancient, with a guitar sludge as thick as the La Brea tar pits. And “Hitchhiker” is a slow-burning memoir that tracks Young’s progress from Canadian protest singer to seventies megastar; he doesn’t elide his drug use or, for that matter, his ongoing obsession with Incas and Aztecs. And the last verse, inspiringly plainspoken like much of Young’s writing here (“I don’t know how I’m standing here living in my life / I’m thankful for my children and my faithful wife”), drifts off into a haze of tape loops. It’s one of the most overt moments of production on the album, and one of the most effective.