Neil Diamond had nothing left to show in 2005. However with the late-career basic 12 Songs, he proved it anyway. By now Diamond had been by way of so many phases—upstart rocker, brooding folk-rocker, bigger than life entertainer—that you simply may need forgotten he was above all a songwriter. Enter Rick Rubin, contemporary from a manufacturing triumph with Johnny Money (together with a Diamond track, “Solitary Man”) and able to work the identical magic.
In Diamond’s catalogue, 12 Songs didn’t come out of nowhere: His earlier album Three Chord Opera was his first totally self-written one in many years, and already evinced a flip away from the shiny productions of previous. However with Rubin he took issues just a few steps additional. As he defined within the album’s liner notes, the producer insisted that he dedicate additional time to the writing: “Rick was determined not to rush the process, but to wait until we got to the essence of the songs I was working on.”
Rubin additionally insisted that Diamond choose up his guitar once more, and the strummed acoustic turned the musical coronary heart of the file. The album isn’t fairly as stripped-down because it sounds: There are dozen different musicians, together with acquainted names like studio vet Larry Knechtel (who shares piano duties with trendy pop determine, Roger Joseph Manning from Jellyfish), and the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell (the album’s musical MVP, doing guitar and preparations). But the album feels intimate from begin to end: On the opening “Oh Mary” your ears anticipate a roomful of voices to come back in throughout the refrain, but it surely stays only one man chanting his beloved’s identify, and all of the more practical for it.
Just like the Money albums, 12 Songs places the emphasis on extra critical materials. However there’s an enormous distinction: Money’s American Recordings sequence is filled with songs about creeping mortality, getting darker with every installment. However Diamond didn’t actually roll that manner: His personal advancing-age track, “Hell Yeah,” is each beneficiant and good-humored. He calls himself a “lucky old dreamer” who’s “been around a good long while” and hell yeah, he discovered a bit and had a good time. Then he takes time to talk on to the listener: “I hear you wondering out loud, are you ever gonna make it?…Just believe you can. Hell yeah, you will.”
Likewise, “Man of God” harks again to the philosophical Diamond of “I Am..I Said”: The message right here is that you will discover God in love or in a track, even when you “never learned to pray.” It will get an additional contact of gospel with Hammond organ from the nice Billy Preston, sadly making his final recorded look.
However that is nonetheless a Neil Diamond album, and the guts remains to be his pure territory—whether or not he’s mourning a misplaced love on “Evermore” or celebrating a brand new one on “Save Me a Saturday Night” (these songs are tellingly positioned again to again). His classic-model, Brill Constructing pop instincts are within the combine as effectively: “I’m On to You” echoes his swaggering Bang Information days, and is the one monitor to incorporate drums. The sweetly nostalgic “Delirious Love” already has a little bit of Seashore Boys really feel, with an easy-rolling “Help Me Rhonda” sort groove, so it made excellent sense to chop an alternate model with Brian Wilson doing the backing-vocal honors.
12 Songs wound up getting a few of his greatest opinions in many years, and have become one in all his few albums to hit the High 10 with out the advantage of an enormous hit single. And it answered the query of whether or not Neil Diamond may pull off a comeback at age 64: Hell yeah, he may.
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