Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 20/02/06
Label: Columbia

Once famed for putting the metal in hip hop (Run DMC / The Beastie Boys) and then the death in metal (Slayer's "Reign In Blood") Rick Rubin's recording techniques of late have apparently meant nothing more than the hiring of a creaky wooden cabin, some acoustic instruments and inserting a microphone deep in the guts of an American icon. Such techniques worked famously for Johnny Cash, whose career was stuttering toward Las Vegas purgatory until Rubin revived it. Now Johnny's dead and gone, although Joaquin Phoenix ensures his legend lives on.

Who will play Neil Diamond when he departs this mortal coil is another matter, but he is the second legend to benefit from Rubin's no frills hand. After 1976's "Beautiful Noise", Diamond's muse seemed to depart him, and he appeared content to perform his weighty catalogue to housewives of the world's arenas. And what a catalogue: "I'm A Believer", "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon", "Red, Red Wine"… Schooled in the Brill Building, Diamond is up there with Smokey Robinson and Jimmy Webb in the art of songwriting.

This iconic voice is the one that Rubin intends to reconnect us with - an aim that mostly succeeds. Ushered in by a quiet "One, two, three, four…" opening track "Oh Mary" is as stately as they come, the piano, violin and guitar seemingly there in the room and Diamond's vintage voice deep in the ear. Stained like oak, it's weathered and warm but dignified enough to brace a storm.

Not as stark as Cash's mediations on death and dying, the remaining eleven tracks are mostly stripped down affairs, coloured by flashes of xylophone or strings. On the ornate "Save Me A Saturday Night" and the desperate "Face Me", the tension is barely palpable; elsewhere, "Delirious Love" (later reprised as a bonus duet with Brian Wilson - now that would make an interesting next Rubin project) and "I'm On To You" are borderline euphoric. Beck's dad, David Campbell, provides a swinging arrangement on the latter.

For some, the excursions into god-bothering territory ("Create Me", "Man Of God") will be too mawkish, but few could deny that we're now in the full swing of a fascinating new era - a place where rock'n'roll, formerly the preserve of the doomed teenager with nothing to lose, has grown old.

And, in growing older, those original rock n rollers, despite their unimagined riches and rampant egos, have, once again, nothing left to lose: Dylan, Cash and now Diamond, who once personified what it meant to be young and free, are telling us what it is to die. "I've been around, and I know what happens," as he tells it to Mary. Long may he sing these songs of experience. Long may Rubin catch these pieces of our history. The Diamond shines on.

    by Adam Webb