Fifty years spent trampling across America’s cultural consciousness have earned Neil Young the irksome label of ‘Second Most Important Singer Songwriter’ of his generation (a certain Robert Zimmerman wins by a nose).

With Le Noise, Shakey lobs stark retrospection into the usual mix of melancholy and bludgeoning noise. If you don’t like him by now, this won’t change much – even without veteran backing-band Crazy Horse, this is archetypal late-era Young, an angsty, aging, badger-faced rock-and-roller, clawing at a battle-scarred Les Paul and singing in wavering falsetto over its skull-rattling volume.

Ghostly bleeps and demented feedback abound, and it’s this and Young’s thunderous rhythm playing that enlivens weaker, lyrically banal tracks. ‘Hitchhiker’, a rumbling drug-by-drug history of Young’s career, pretty ‘Love and War’ and crunchy, knowingly brainless ‘Angry World’ are highlights. Hard work, but, given time, pretty darn good.