Album Review: Neil Young - Le Noise

Neil Young's latest album is aptly tiled Le Noise. The album features only Young's voice and a slew of guitars with no accompaniment from additional musicians. Le Noise's eight tracks are sparse but noisy, with all but two featuring fuzzed out, reverb soaking guitars.

The two acoustic tunes are really the stand outs of the album, especially "Love and War" which grabs hold of a common lyrical theme for Young in recent years — the pain of war. The lyrics of "Love and War" are moving and very sad, discussing the death of soldiers and the effect it has on those who love them.

Another politically tinged number is "Angry World" which attempts to capture the volatile state of the U.S. The song focuses on the corruption that led to the recession and those who were done wrong.

Much like Young's 2006 album Living With War captured his feelings about the state of things at that time, Le Noise does that again.

While Le Noise is a deeply emotional album, the noisy landscape that producer Daniel Lanois helped paint won't win over many new fans, but will keep die-hard fans pleased. At times the noise drowns out some poignant lyrics which may have been better suited on a old Martin acoustic rather than a noisy electric guitar.

Le Noise will be released on Sept. 28 via Reprise Records.