Album: Neil Young, Le Noise (Reprise)

Daniel Lanois is a producer who makes every record he works on sound like a Daniel Lanois album.

So it's strange that the one that comes closest to bearing his name could only be the work of Old Shakey. Because what Lanois has done is to distill over 40 years of Young's music into under 40 minutes. There is sonic experimentation, but Le Noise is essentially the sound of a man, a guitar and an (at times painfully) open heart. In its best moments it's as good as almost anything in the increasingly inconsistent canon.