Daniel Lanois

Featuring: Brian Eno

condition (record/cover):  NM / VG+ (light ring and edges wear)

With original innersleeve.

By 1989 Daniel Lanois had spent the decade quietly becoming a notable producer of his generation: Brian Eno's collaborator on Apollo, co-producer of U2's The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree, Peter Gabriel's sonic architect on So, Robbie Robertson's producer of choice. Acadie, his first solo album, released in 1989 on Eno's Opal Records, is the record where Lanois finally stepped out from behind the desk and revealed what he had been doing on his own time.

The material draws on Lanois's French-Canadian roots in Quebec and Acadie (the Maritimes-derived dialect tradition his family came from). "Still Water" opens the record with a Lanois vocal that sounds like Tom Waits singing through pedal steel. "The Maker" is the album's hymn, structured around the kind of slow chord progression Lanois would shortly bring to Bob Dylan's Oh Mercy. "Jolie Louise" is a bilingual folk-pop song in French and English, anchored by accordion and a melody that became one of Lanois's signature pieces. "Ice" is two minutes of pure ambient guitar. Eno appears as treatment-producer on a handful of tracks; Aaron Neville, Mason Ruffner and members of the Neville Brothers contribute throughout.

The original vintage Opal Records pressing on 9 25969-1, distributed by Warner Bros. Acadie opens the second phase of Lanois's career as artist-in-his-own-right (extending through For The Beauty Of Wynona and Belladonna), and remains one of the most quietly individual rock records of the late 1980s.