What Does ILM Think of Daniel Lanois?

i like most of TOOM a lot, and think that the murky production is a cool element. i don't want every dylan album to sound like that, but it's got some great tunes on it. "trying to get to heaven" "highlands" "cold irons bound" "not dark yet" "standing in the doorway"... it's definitely a *strange* production. sounds like a LOT of players on each track -- multiple guitarists, drummers, keyboards, all mixed in this odd, distant way. what's interesting is to hear the outtakes on Tell Tale Signs (which I presume were not mixed by Lanois) -- they've got a much clearer/sharper sound and much more "together" sounding performances. One wonders if there are unused takes of a lot of those TOOM songs along the same lines.

I thought this story about Lanois pouting over not being the lead guitarist on the TOOM session said a lot about the guy's ego -- stuff I've always suspected but you don't get from his memoir.

oh yeah, i'm sure the dude has a major ego. how could he not? and yeah, in the hands of a different producer, TOOM would've been a very different album, but i don't know, it's an album I can live with. anyway, if you want to hear (most of) those songs stripped of their Lanoisiana, seek out the bootlegs or live singles Dylan put out after the fact. more along the lines of Love & Theft (same band from that album, roughly).

There's also anecdotes about Lanois resisting U2's "reinvention" on Achtung Baby; the band pegged him as the one mired in "old U2."

xp like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh6olWmjzo8

mired in "old U2" during achtung baby was prob shorthand for "the guy who is more steeped in american music"

Aren't there stories about Dylan wanting to make some kind of Beck-ish album before Lanois did TOOM? It seems to age better than, say, Pop.

ha, i don't think i'd heard that (beck-ish). i know that lanois at some point suggested sampling old 78s to get some sort of ambiance for TOOM. there might even be a sample from a charley patton record or something?

the version of "Red River Shore" (rejected, according to Clinton Heylin, quite reluctantly) on TTS is unimprovable. I shudder thinking how Lanois would have smothered it.

yeah, that one really suggests a whole different conception of how the album could've sounded.

looking at lanois' production credits and holy shit -- did not know he did simply saucer's demo!

And Luscious Jackson! And Scott Weiland!

Also, while I think Lanois clearly gravtitates toward Americana stuff, he can be pretty adventurous. I mean, "So" is a strange, spacious, airy sounding record. And possibly the weirdest, most atypical stuff he's ever done was, of all things, the Robbie Robertson solo album, which had those two or so bizarre tracks with Tony Levin (on stick) and Terry Bozzio (!) as the rhythm section.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze89N8Gc3sk

ha, those are pretty weird dudes to pair with robbie robertson. that album is so bad though.

Though of course this is more par for the course, Robertson doing Gabriel (with Gabriel), which at the least further counters the Robertson auteur theory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGw7Bn05feE

That Luscious Jackson record sounds like he worked with them but didn't have final cut, and so it's kind of his sound but not all-in.

I always wish Lanois had taken Leonard Cohen's Ten New Songs and did his thing with it.

yeah him and cohen might be a good fit. get those canucks together!

interesting to hear some praise for Teatro on this thread - i haven't listened to that one a bunch, but when I did, it seemed like Lanois had sucked all the life out of Willie.

I hated Teatro at the time.

You'd think with Robertson and Young off the bucket list, he would have found his way to Cohen by now.

any minute now, it'll be announced that he's manning the boards for the next arcade fire opus

Teatro's back cover tells it all: a picture of Willie looking like he's stoned to the gills with no idea what he's doing there.

xpost Arcade Fire already produced by Markus Dravs, former Eno acolyte/apprentice/assistant.

I saw Willie live when Teatro was new (at Farm Aid) & he sounded terrific playing those songs: it sounded huge & spooky in the giant amphitheater. It's a good record but not one to which I've returned, & I ought to do so.

I think I was at the same show. Tinley Park? Was Lanois in the band? With those two Cuban drummers?

Tinley Park, right, the year with Brian Wilson, Phish jamming with Neil Young, & Mellencamp with a rap interlude.

I didn't know Lanois was in the band, though! Definitely remember the drumming: that was a big part of the spooky vibe that night.

Especially love the last track on Teatro, "I've Loved You All Over The World."

Similarly, I saw Emmylou Harris at First Avenue when Wrecking Ball came out, with drums and percussion and all, and she was terrific.

his recordings: Acadie then diminishing returns

his productions: unlistenable in philly otm: "But with Lanois it feels kind of - I don't know - like, his aesthetic can draw the best out of an artist, but that's not really his primary concern. Which I find a little offputting, even when it sounds terrific"

i kind of dig the instrumental record he did with brian blade and mehldau a few years ago. haven't really been a fan of his vocals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zeu7kMwQPws

his productions: unlistenable in philly otm: "But with Lanois it feels kind of - I don't know - like, his aesthetic can draw the best out of an artist, but that's not really his primary concern. Which I find a little offputting, even when it sounds terrific"

I missed this post earlier and completely agree. You only need to look at the number of times he's either hired a documentarian to film the proceedings (Rocky World, Wrecking Ball, Here Is What Is) or written about himself (Soul Mining) to see that it seems like it's a lot more about him than the people he's working with.

Oh Mercy going down pretty nicely at the moment. "Most of the Time" is really fabulous.

Such a weirdly first rating guy. I want to love his sound and approach and then he goes and films himself live mixing a track in some Hollywood mansion after drinking a shot of "truth serum." Gag.

I was surprised to learn, on buying a Raffi record from the used bin a while back for my kids, that it was produced by Daniel Lanois, who, at the time, ran a small studio near where Raffi worked.

https://joelfrancis.com/2009/05/15/lanois-raffi-eno/

Xpost, first rating = frustrating

Listening back the last few days ...

Flesh and Machine, his most recent solo record, is really good. Whereas most of his records have his sensitive new age guy emoting on them, lots of Rock-with-a-capital-R guitar and a bunch of his (admittedly nice) pedal steel playing, this one is pretty much just Lanois manipulating loops on his Lexicon Prime Time. About half of the tracks have Brian Blade doing his Brian Blade thing and there's a bit of pedal steel and piano in places. But most of it is loops, echoes and textures he's mixing together to create some kind of composition. Probably my favorite thing under his own name.

Le Noise, his Neil Young album from 2010, is generally really good if somewhat less revolutionary than he probably imagined it was when he made it. It's one of Lanois' uber– pretentious conceits: just Neil, his guitar and Lanois' "sonics" recorded in a spooky Hollywood mansion with shit projected on the walls while Neil laid tracks down. And candidly, there isn't much about the production that you can't do using a handful of plugins on a Mac in today's day and age. But Neil's songs are among his strongest in probably 20 years – "Hitchhiker" is a rambling Neil classic. And Lanois' production, to his credit, brings out some nice Crazy Horse-ish textures on the guitars and an often hidden ghostly quality in Neil's vocals. B&W film of the proceedings (another Lanois hobbyhorse of late) is pretty solid as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU5B53b9ntQ&feature=youtu.be

goodbye to language is pretty cool, nothing incredible but i feel like i've wanted an album of ambient pedal steel for a long long time

i love it, really beautiful sounds.

chuck johnson has an ambient pedal steel record coming out on VDSQ, keep your eyes open!

yeahhh that should be cool.

nice i keep forgetting to buy that sarah louise too

yeah, that is prob the best purely solo guitar record of the year (that i've heard anyway). better than glenn jones! (barely).

anyway, some heavy what-if-kevin-shields-played-pedal-steel vibes on the new lanois

I've seen some stunning Lanois shows which were mostly him on pedal steel and Brian Blade on drums. He's a great songwriter and guitarist, though, so sometimes I wish he would release another songwriter record.

anyway, some heavy what-if-kevin-shields-played-pedal-steel vibes on the new lanois

― tylerw, Friday, September 9, 2016 9:59 AM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not pedal steel but the half of Le Noise that works, works really well and reminds me of a neil/mbv thing

yeah this is really good.

fuuuuuck
this album of ambient pedal steel is ON FLEEK

love it

yup

it's kind of like everything i like about lanois freed of troublesome "songs" (which sometimes his cavernous production tends to overwhelm imo)

"ambient pedal steel" sounds like catnip to me, psyched

xpost I dunno we've talked about it before and I think the trademark Lanois production is a lot more about amps and guitars and rooms than production tricks. His solo albums are a million times less fussy than, say, "So." Though I don't think "So" is an indicative Lanois production, so ...

yeah I don't view his productions as "cluttered" so much as very very distinctive, and here I'm generalizing a bit but with certain albums and certain artists it's definitely putting a stamp on the album like I "Time Out of Mind" or "Teatro"...and can be a big heavy handed at times (IMO) but also really good, I mean he's definitely got a thing

this album is just the best

U2 made their best albums (Boy and Zooropa) without him, IMO.

(Willie Nelson sounds like a guest on his own Teatro)

heh this might be my second favorite Willie record since his Outlaw heyday came to a close (Spirit is better)
but tbf he's released a LOT in the last 40 years and I've heard very few.

(Willie Nelson sounds like a guest on his own Teatro)

I didn't see this (I need to start reading thread starters). LMAO. This sounds like a common complaint with Lanois albums - as much as I like Emmylou Harris's Wrecking Ball, it could've been credited as a Daniel Lanois album with guest vocalist Emmylou Harris, and I wouldn't have questioned it. With Willie, he's made a ton of albums loaded with guest stars and a ton that's basically shared with someone else, so Teatro kind of fits into that tradition except this time he's sharing top-billing with a producer rather than a performer.

Willie's output since the whole IRS thing has been impressive as hell. Right after he settled his tax problems, he recorded one last album for Columbia before they dropped him, and on of that he turned 60, yet he's been ridiculously prolific. I have a real soft spot for that last Columbia album, Across the Borderline. Even if it seems fairly calculated, who cares? He still hits every target. Spirit is easily my favorite, hands down his greatest album since his '70s classics. Even his last few albums have been consistently good too. Teatro is a commendable album, and Lanois's production certainly distinguishes it, but it's not one of my favorites from either Willie or Lanois.

*on top of that he turned 60

yeah i can't say i've knowingly heard Across the Borderline but it looks like it could be interesting.

I gave a listen to Band of Brother(i think that's what it's called?) a while back, which as i understand it all new self-penned compositions, maybe his first like that this century? it was pleasant enough but I can't remember much sticking with me

I think Teatro is an album that on paper seems like it would be a good fit for Lanois, but really isn't. Emmylou I disagree with, though. She specifically approached it as a reinvention of sorts, and all of her solo albums since then have hewed closer to it than to any of her formative works, Lanois or no. Plus, I think the setting and band suits her super well, from song selection to sonics. I don't think she ever sounds less than the star and central focus. Even if it often feels collaborative, I also consider it a perfect pairing of performer and producer. A case in point could be "Where Will I Be," which is a beautiful (Lanois) song sung perfectly by Emmy, vs. "The Maker," another beautiful Lanois song, which is not done justice by Willie on his record.

I did get to see Willie and Lanois doing stuff from that album at Farm Aid in 1998 though! Which also featured the Neil Young/Phish collaboration no one ever asked for. Oh, and a good Brian Wilson performance, iirc!

I love Teatro. Agree Spirit is excellent but don’t hear a thing in Teatro worth complaining about. Willie’s playing is so loose, the roomy sound of the drums is perfect.

I checked Teatro out of the library two weeks ago and gave up after a few plays.

Agree with the praise for Spirit.

but I dig a few Willie shlock-a-rama albums from the mid '80s, so ymmmv

Didn’t know Lanois was there with Nelson at Farm Aid 1998. I was there too!

Yeah, I think he had the two Cuban drummers from the album with him, too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jh5_4o0TCs

There was a sense with Teatro—what with moderately esoteric song choices, the Wim Wenders documentary, and the ramshackle recording setting—that Lanois and Willie were both kind of treading water a bit. It’s fine – but as Josh alludes to, there’s nothing about his version of “The Maker” that the original doesn’t do better. Which is saying something because Willie is arguably one of the dozen or so best singers of the 20th century.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Wrecking Ball no matter how much I try. There are a ton of surface pleasures for me with this record, the material with Neil Young, Larry Mullen on drums. “Goin’ Back to Harlan” is pretty much perfection and “Sweet Old World” is almost as good. But it has this air of pretension that kind of leaves me cold and it marks the beginning of Emmylou’s transformation from transcendent country harmonist to creaky alt country emoter.

It's heretical, I guess, but when Harris sings solo she bores me; she's a genius on backup.

There's a track Lanois did on Syd Straw's debut album that epitomizes a producer applying their signature sound in the most rote, unimaginative way possible (not that the song would have been very notable with a better approach).

I think the last track, "Golden Dreams," is the only one actually produced by Lanois. For Eno completists like me, it features, well, Eno. Incredible number of amazing musicians on that album, though. Everyone from Pino Palladino and Jim Keltner to Marc Ribot and Michael Stipe. Probably leftover connections and goodwill from her Golden Palominos experience.

A good example of what a different producer can do is that first Ron Sexsmith album, which is mostly produced by Froom but which features one song twice, the second time produced by Lanois. Here's the Froom:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsEZPvipd2U

And here's the Lanois:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxxulc82lN4

Froom was a better match, at least imo.

The first Chris Whitley album (produced by Malcolm Burn at Lanois's studio) is a good example of Lanois, once-removed. Similarly, maybe, is "Fuse" by Joe Henry, which sounds super cool and was produced by T Bone Burnett but I think mixed by Lanois. (Incidentally, Lanois used to be managed by Melanie Ciccone, Henry's wife and Madonna's sister.)

I looked at the credits on the Syd Straw album, which I have, but never realized the Lanois/Eno involvement. They produced that last track together, he was involved in the production of another, and mixed a third.

"Golden Dreams" is perfectly wonderful. Nothing rote about it.

This is an amusing comparison because Froom is absolutely another producer who increasingly brought a bag of tricks to most of the artists he produced. And usually that bag was carrying a trash can lid and a Chamberlain.

I actually thought of "There's a Rhythm" as another example of Lanois-by-numbers when I made my post.

Honestly, I find the whole Syd Straw album overly fussy except for "Future Forties".

I think the Syd Straw album is kind of fussy and underdeveloped at the same time, but it's been a while. The Sexsmith, I agree that is *totally* Lanois by numbers. I posted it because I think Ron made the right choice by going with the trashcan lid guy.

It's funny, one of the most famous Lanois (solo) productions is "So," but that album lacks many if not most of the characteristics that he's famous for. As opposed to "Us," which is a lot more airy and muddy.

Got distracted just now and finally followed up on this vague credit he gets for working on the "Last of the Mohicans" soundtrack. I never realized even that was subject to Michael Mann's whims.

Director Michael Mann initially asked Trevor Jones to provide an electronic score for the film, but late in production, it was decided an orchestral score would be more appropriate for this historic epic. Jones hurried to re-fashion the score for orchestra in the limited time left, while the constant re-cutting of the film meant music cues sometimes had to be rewritten several times to keep up with the new timings. Finally, with the release date looming, composer Randy Edelman was called in to score some minor scenes which Jones did not have time to do. Jones and Edelman received co-credit on the film (thus making the score ineligible for Oscar consideration). The main theme of the movie is "Promontory", an orchestration of the tune "The Gael" by Scottish singer-songwriter Dougie MacLean from his 1990 album The Search. The score was re-recorded and re-released in 2000 to address some perceived problems with its original incarnation. The tracks were reordered into their onscreen chronology (the original album separated the Jones material from that composed by Edelman), some additional cues were added, and Clannad's "I Will Find You" was no longer included.

Anyway, that was a secondary distraction, because there is the matter of Lanois. It looks like he gets writing credit for this pretty soundtrack gem, which originated as an as a Lanois track called "Orchestral Mohicans":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cM1aVESfYk

I forgot he also produced the soundtrack to Red Dead Redemption 2, including songs with Willie, D'Angelo and this sentimental ballad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2Rhe5BrYpI

Interesting process talk here:

How different was working on Red Dead from working on, say, a movie soundtrack?

The person playing the game is directing the character, either to walk into a saloon or walk down by the riverbed, let’s say—and depending on the choice you make, you’ll hear a certain part of a given song. We call that a stem. So I have to mix the melodic stem separately from the rest of the song. It makes me put all my mixing energy into those few components at that moment. When I listened back to these stems—these little sub-mixes—they really had a lot of vibe to them, because I was devoting all of my skills to one small aspect of a bigger production. Then we’d move on to the bassline, and then the drums and percussion. So maybe there’d be six or seven choices gotten to by moving the character in the game. And then at some point all those sounds come together.

I thought that was fascinating. It reminded me a little bit of this multiple-speaker thing that I had going with Eno for a while. We’d have maybe a dozen different speakers spread all over the studio, or around the house, and we’d send different sounds through different speakers. I thought that was just fabulous, because you were walking through a forest of sounds that changed largely by distance. Moving into this mixing for the game touched on that nerve—something that I had already fallen in love with a long time ago.

Goodbye to Language is soooooooo good

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, January 22, 2021 9:27 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Speaking of D'Angelo, I bet Lanois was knocked on his butt when he heard "Voodoo."

I'm so sad that the new album is not a follow-up to Goodbye to Language. Not into any of this.

New interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c92R9rAANeA

His brother Bob died today:

https://www.ajournalofmusicalthings.com/bob-lanois-the-producer-studio-owner-brother-of-daniel-has-died/

Among many other things, Bob Lanois produced the sessions that became Simply Saucer's Cyborgs Revisited. According to the story Bob told me when I was writing my book, Dan came home late while the recording was happening in their mom's basement and plugged his ears. R.I.P. https://t.co/Fl4QhdN3So

— Jesse Locke (@wipeoutbeat) April 20, 2021

Aw.

Proper obit here:

Bob Lanois patiently taught me how to run a mixing board at Grant Avenue when I was teenager. This skill helped guide my future in radio. He also showed me how to "listen" to sounds...musical and all sounds. #RIPBobLanois. You were a sweet soul. https://t.co/pWGRmn0gsy

— Peggy Chapman (@PeggyChapman16) April 20, 2021

Good take on a posthumous release, imo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs8nUCLQTgw

Long interview on Beato's channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxP9kKzbCFA

Which is how I learned of this, the group Lanois worked with that brought him to Eno's attention:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOJDelGsWlw