Here's a first look at Neil Young's upcoming album Le Noise, whose title is a play on the last name of producer Daniel Lanois. The track is "Hitchhiker," a song that Young's kicked around since the '70s, playing it acoustic on the Harvest Moon tour in the early '90s and resurrecting it for this project. "Hitchhiker" was the undoubted highlight of his recent Portland show, sounding like a revelation in a fiery solo electric version. Hearing the album version is weird, though, with Lanois' sonic fingerprints all over it: echo, delay, swirls, and an altogether crisp digital sound, which has always been anathema to Young's typically rusted-out analog oeuvre. Anyway, here it is. The song is fascinating in its detailing of Young's drug use over the years (he didn't do anything everyone else did in the '60s and '70s, by the sounds of it).
Le Noise comes out September 28.