Neil Young: "A Letter Home" The Diner Review...Review

Soooo…. Neil Young.  The man, the myth the… aging, deteriorating and recently annoying icon.  It is well documented.  I love this guy.  I think his body of work stands up favorably as the best ever in rock.  That having been said there is a time to stop and he has not put out anything interesting (to me) in years but… body of work speaking wise…

1963	The Squires	"The Sultan" b/w "Aurora"
1966	Buffalo Springfield	Buffalo Springfield
1967	Buffalo Springfield	Buffalo Springfield Again
1968	Buffalo Springfield	Last Time Around
	Neil Young	Neil Young
1969	Buffalo Springfield	Retrospective
	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
1970	Crosby Stills Nash & Young	Déjà vu
	Neil Young	After the Goldrush
1971	Crosby Stills Nash & Young	4 Way Street
1972	Neil Young	Harvest
	Neil Young & Graham Nash	"War Song" b/w "Needle and the Damage Done"
	Neil Young	Journey Through the Past
1973	Neil Young	Time Fades Away
1974	Neil Young	On the Beach
1975	Neil Young	Tonight's the Night
	Neil Young	Zuma
1976	The Stills-Young Band	Long May You Run
1977	Neil Young	American Stars & Bars
	Neil Young	Decade
1978	Neil Young	Comes a Time
1979	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Rust Never Sleeps
	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Live Rust
1980	Neil Young	Hawks & Doves
1981	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Re-ac-tor
1982	Neil Young	Trans
1983	Neil Young & the Shocking Pinks	Everybody's Rockin'
1985	Neil Young	Old Ways
1986	Neil Young	Landing On Water
1987	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Life
1988	Neil Young & the Bluenotes	This Note's For You
	Crosby Stills Nash & Young	American Dream
1989	Neil Young & The Restless	Eldorado
	Neil Young	Freedom
1990	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Ragged Glory
1991	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Arc Weld
1992	Neil Young	Harvest Moon
1993	Neil Young	Lucky 13
	Neil Young	Unplugged
1994	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Sleeps With Angels
1995	Neil Young	Mirror Ball
1996	Neil Young	Dead Man
	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Broken Arrow
1997	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Year of the Horse
1999	Crosby Stills Nash & Young	Looking Forward
2000	Neil Young	Silver & Gold
	Neil Young	Road Rock v1
2001	Buffalo Springfield	Box Set
2002	Neil Young	Are You Passionate?
2003	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Greendale
	Neil Young	Greatest Hits
2005	Neil Young	Prairie Wind
2006	Neil Young	Living With War
	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Live At The Fillmore East 1970
	Neil Young	Living With War: In The Beginning
2007	Neil Young	Live At Massey Hall 1971
	Neil Young	Chrome Dreams 2
2008	Crosby Stills Nash & Young	CSNY/Déjà Vu Live
	Neil Young	Sugar Mountain - Live at Canterbury House 1968
2009	Neil Young	Fork In The Road
	Neil Young Archives Volume 1	Box Set
	Neil Young	Dreamin' Man Live '92
2010	Neil Young	Le Noise
2011	Neil Young International Harvesters	A Treasure
2012	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Americana
	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Psychedelic Pill
2013	Neil Young	Live at The Cellar Door
2014	Neil Young	A Letter Home

I have the ability to cull the list, and there is a LOT of shit here, to get to some essentials which I believe are as follows:

1. Everybody Knows this Is Nowhere

2. After the Goldrush

3. Harvest

4. Tonights The Night

5. Zuma

6. American Stars And Bars

7. Rust Never Sleeps

8. Hawks And Doves

9. Freedom

10. Ragged Glory

11. Unplugged

This of course does not include his Buffalo Springfield work and any of his work with CSN.  That is great work too and this list also does not include his compilations and live stuff other than “UnPlugged” which just cannot be ignored as a unique CD even though all the songs had been previously released.  The live and archived stuff he has been issuing is awesome but it shows the brilliance and strength around his earlier work.  I could make a reasonably cogent argument that he has not been relevant to me since 1990 and Ragged Glory.  I mean there have been good songs on most every album (with some notable exceptions) but overall, very solid.

Neil has always been disappointed by digital sound, at first decrying the CD and then really going ape shit about digitally compressed music and MP3’s and what not.  If you read his autobiography (and I will pause and say a brief prayer that you did not), there is a lot of discussion about the sound obsession and about him retooling one of his classic cars with this exquisite digital sound system and now he has gotten investors and friends and fans to invest in something called PONO.  I have zero (0) appreciation for high end sound.  My ears are shot and the idea that you ever get really good sound in a moving vehicle has always seemed ludicrous to me but to Niel… it is a big deal.  If you ever get bored…

http://www.ponomusic.com/#home

Soooo…. against the backdrop of this digital obsession for ultra high end music, where would you suppose Neil would go this time?  EDM?  Reinventing country.  Revisiting Grunge?  Taking us back to the garage with Crazy Horse?  All of these would make sense with the new obsession.  Instead he hooked up with the guy Rolling Stone just called “The Willy Wonka” of rock, Jack White.  White has moved to Nashville and has the hippest little record store in the country (Third Man records) and is also operating a studio called (Cleverly enough) Third Man Studios.  Anyway, white has a little recording booth where people can make their own records.  Evidently it was a “thing” at some point in the past and you can come in and go into the booth and cut your own album.  It has a scratchy home made sound and is the opposite of everything Neil has been working on but it is really “authentic” if by authentic you mean almost homemade.

To his credit, he has made a really personal CD/Album/Digital Download.  “A Letter Home” is basically his effort at a message in sound and dialogue to his mother.  Telling her stories and singing her songs and dialoguing with her like a prayer and talking to her about his brother and encouraging her to make up with dad… I guess it is sweet.  It is interesting that there are no Neil Young songs on the CD and perhaps the brilliance in this format is in doing all covers.

To be a fan of Neil is to be in love with the vagaries of his voice.  The atonal, tunefulness that he is able to crank out and the acoustic format has always been the best for showcasing that particularly beautiful train wreck.  The Willie Nelson classic “On The Road Again” with Jack White singing and playing, the haunting “If You Could read My Mind Love” so much more nuanced than Gordon Lightfoot’s reading but the best of show is “Girl From The North Country”.  It has been covered a million times but for whatever reason this one… resonates.  Second best cover is his take on Springsteen’s mournful “My Home Town” which no matter which economic crisis that you're living through seems like it could have been written a week ago.

So, I am pretty happy with this CD.  It is not a desert island disc but it is another part of that body of work I keep talking about and I really think, when Neil passes, his body of work will be regarded by many as the greatest of the rock era.  I am just saying...