ARTIST: Neil Diamond
TITLE: 12 Songs
LABEL: SonyBMG
GENRE: Rock
TIME: 57:28 min
SIZE: 80,6 MB
RIP DATE: Feb-17-2006
RELEASE DATE: Feb-20-2006
WEBSITE: n/a
Track List:
01. Oh Mary 05:13
02. Hell Yeah 04:26
03. Captain Of A Shipwreck 03:55
04. Evermore 05:19
05. Save Me A Satuday Night 03:32
06. Delirious Love 03:12
07. I'm On To You 04:28
08. What's It Gonna Be 04:05
09. Man Of God 04:22
10. Create Me 04:10
11. Face Me 03:27
12. We 03:51
13. Men Are So Easy 04:04
14. Delirious Love (With Brian Wilson) 03:24
Release Notes:
Here's the reissue containing 2 additional tracks.
Enjoy...
Neil Diamond was the most successful solo touring
artist of the Nineties and has a following that
grows ever more fanatical with age. But up until now
he is the last person one would describe as hip or
cool.
The buzz around 12 Songs centres on the involvement
of Rick Rubin, the only producer whose oeuvre takes
in acts as varied as System of a Down, Jay-Z and
Johnny Cash and who can lend multi-million selling
albums his own cachet of hip credibility.
It's impossible to write about 12 Songs without
acknowledging Rubin's hand in its creation - he,
after all, approached Diamond rather than the other
way around - and, specifically, the series of albums
Rubin recorded with Johnny Cash, from 1994 up until
the singer's death in 2003. The records employed a
bare-boned production style and were ruthlessly
keyed into the singer's outsider reputation. That
Cash sounded as if he was almost at death's door
when he recorded them made the choice of songs -
even cheese like 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' - all
the more poignant. Cash's third album with Rubin
even set the seeds in motion for 12 Songs by taking
its title from a cover of Diamond's 'Solitary Man'.
Here, Rubin employs the same sober production style,
working on the principle that stripping the songs
down to their barest elements reveals the underlying
craft. While unable to lend the project the kind of
gravitas that Cash had as a performer, Diamond
brings to bear his years of songwriting experience.
He cut his teeth crafting hits for the Monkees for
Don Kirshner in the Brill Building. He knows how to
turn a tune and craft a clever lyric. But even at
his most dour, he's always been a feel-good
singer-songwriter; Leonard Cohen with a smiley face.
And at his best when writing frivolous bubblegum pop
like 'I'm a Believer' and 'Cherry Cherry'.
And this is the principal flaw of 12 Songs. By
laying the songs bare, Rubin also inadvertently
strips them of the energy that gives them their
power in the first place. So while a song like
'Delirious Love', which is all about being caught up
in a riptide of emotions, at least benefits from the
added brio of its performance here, one feels that
the whimsical 'Save Me a Saturday Night' would be
better served in the hands of, say, the Archies. The
more portentous tracks such as 'Create Me' and 'Face
Me' come off worse, sounding more leaden than
affecting.
Just as a great story or a joke is all in the
telling, a great song is all in the delivery. And
you come away from 12 Songs feeling that Diamond may
not, after all, be the best interpreter of his
songs. Despite all the folksy hokum in Diamond's
sleevenotes about his songwriting process, 12 Songs
should be seen less as a creative reawakening than
the inevitable meeting of two powerhouse commercial
entities.