Vinyl Review of Le Noise: TONEAudio MAGAZINE

Last week, we weighed in on observing the trend of critics falling all over themselves about how Neil Young has returned to form with the new album Le Noise.

Here's a review that provides a little more insight on what's going on here. For starters, we'll suggest that most folks have heard Le Noise only in lo-fi mode -- YouTubes and PC speakers. Professional music critics however have had the privilege of hearing the album as designed via hi-fidelity systems. And vinyl.

But once the ordinary people really hear and experience the Lanois produced "sonics" we'll venture that many fence sitters may come around on Le Noise. Here's why based on a *vinyl* review from TONEAudio MAGAZINE by Bob Gendron:

"How Lanois got such terrific sounds, and what he did with the guitar, is part of the genius. He initially outfitted an acoustic model with a pickup that imitates the human voice and loops it through the song, manipulated the two low strings to give them heavier bass presence, and plugged it into a tremolo amplifier. A hollow-body electric guitar, used on six of the eight tunes, got fed through two amplifiers—one clean and one dirtied with tremolo, the dynamic contrasts paralleling Le Noise’s striking juxtapositions of intimacy and enormity, calm and turbulence.

Chords are augmented, magnified, echoed, stretched, thickened, stripped; arrangements unpredictably build, decay, and disintegrate, with some of the random pieces then reassembling into different shapes that collect like iron shavings on a moving magnet. Individual notes break off from parent structures, occasionally taking the form of jagged chards, other times doubling as the clink of a piano or stop of an organ. Riffs seem as if they’ve been filtered through a multitude of distortion devices, choral pedals, sustain gadgets, and delay boxes. An entrenched sense of melody and rhythm allows the songs to hold their shape, and Young’s singing is as clear, attentive, and passionate as it’s been in years.

Straightforward and direct, the songwriting is equally superb.

What an album.

Reprise’s 180g LP possesses depth and width that defy limits. The louder the record is played, the more extraordinary Young and Lanois’ work becomes. The lifelike nature of the acoustic properties, myriad frequencies, and surreal tonalities is eclipsed only by the imaging. It often seems that Young—just as he’s pictured on the album’s cover—is that short of a distance away from the speakers.

Spin the black circle, baby.

Thanks Bob & Jeff !

A must read vinyl review in TONEAudio MAGAZINE.

More on Critics Go GaGa Over New Neil Young Album Le Noise.

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