Reprise

Neil Young is never predictable, but Le Noise is something else altogether. Featuring eight songs that clock in at less than 40 minutes, in essence, it is a solo album, but it is unlike anything he has previously offered. Le Noise is Neil – his voice and his guitar (electric on six tracks, acoustic on two) – and nothing but Neil, produced in a most minimal fashion by Daniel Lanois. The idea, presumably, is to force attention on Young’s words, which are often autobiographical, reflective and philosophical. “Love and War,” one of the album’s acoustic tracks, is a throwaway at its surface but is ultimately more substantial: “When I sing about love and war, I don’t really know what I’m saying,” Young sings in his fractured, delicate voice, going on to reiterate what can never be said often enough: how impossible it is to “explain why daddy won’t ever come home again.” By contrast, “Hitchhiker” is Young in grunge mode, electric axe bathed in reverb as he recounts his pre-fame journey from Toronto to California, and how that past is once again “catching up with me.” Le Noise likely won’t go down as one of Young’s landmarks; rather it’s another oddity alongside Greendale, Trans, the Dead Man soundtrack and his other diversions. Still, as always with Neil Young, it’s worth a listen.