Neil Young has announced on Facebook that his new album will be called Le Noise, and that it will be released on CD, vinyl and iTunes on September 28th. In late November it will then become available on Blu-Ray, and in the form of an iPhone and iPad app. "The app will be free," Young wrote. "It gives you an interactive album cover. Forgive my use of the word 'album.' I am old school. When you buy the songs/movies from I-tunes they show up in your APP."

Young and producer Daniel Lanois recorded the album in a Los Angeles mansion earlier this year. "We cut a couple of solo acoustic songs, but the rest is very electric," Lanois told Rolling Stone last month. "There's no band, but I got in there with my sonics. There's nothing else out there like it." Young previewed many of the tracks on his recent solo theater tour. You can to see his performance of "Hitchhiker," at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, here. Young first performed the autobiographical tune - which features a list of the drugs he has ingested over the decades - on the 1992 Harvest Moon tour.



Neil Young also took to the web recently to address negative fan comments on the popular Neil Young fansite Thrasher's Wheat. (The site’s commenters have complained about Young’s ticket prices, charity work with Tyson Foods, and that he hasn’t played with Crazy Horse for years.) "This is the most respected site on the net for this type of activity," Young wrote about Thrasher's Wheat on his own web site. "Let me take this opportunity to thank you for your interest in what I am doing,” he continued, addressing the site’s operators. “There is always negativity with any internet endeavour. Now it has perhaps worn you down. It is alright to say goodbye ... Whether you choose to continue or just hang it up and get on with your life is up to you.”

I always thought a Young with Lanois album made sense. Have they worked together previously?

cover?

I was hoping to get "Leia" on this album, but it's a piano tune. I'll probably buy this one. I didn't buy Living With War or Fork in the Road because IMO they were kind of impulsive toss-offs.

On first listen, this is excellent. Lanois brings a lot of colour to the songs I first and have only heard live in Albany in the spring. They developed a huge echoic sound on sparse songs, and though it sometimes gets cluttered, and the odd added flourishes are awkward, they made amazing use of space. It still does sound like Dead Man meets Spacemen 3 to me.

This just reminded me that I really don't like Daniel Lanois.

with whom did he work before?

U2, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Bob Dylan, Dashboard Confessional, Peter Gabriel, etc. etc. etc.

My opinion is more related to a half-assed listen at some of his solo albums. I find the flourishes on this one distracting.