Home Before Dark [Bonus DVD]

Artist	Neil Diamond
Format	CD
Genre	Rock
Label Name	Sony
Producer	Rick Rubin
Release Date	2008 04 29
Song List	1: If I Don't See You Again (7:12) 2: Pretty Amazing Grace (4:53) 3: Don't Go There (6:03) 4: Another Day (That Time Forgot) (6:12) 5: One More Bite of the Apple (6:39) 6: Forgotten (4:22) 7: Act Like a Man (4:04) 8: Whose Hands Are These (3:11) 9: No Words (4:48) 10: The Power of Two (4:35) 11: Slow It Down (4:55) 12: Home Before Dark (6:28) 13: Without Her [*] (4:22) 14: Make You Feel My Love [*] (4:38) 15: Pretty Amazing Grace [DVD] 16: If I Don't See You Again [DVD] 17: Forgotten [DVD] 18: The Boxer [DVD]
Style.Categories	Soft Rock, Adult Contemporary, Singer/Songwriter

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Home Before Dark is Neil Diamond's second collaboration with producer Rick Rubin. Their first, 12 Songs, was sabotaged by Sony's "Rootkit" program that invaded the operating system of any computer it was inserted into and wreaked havoc on it in the name of "copy protection." The catastrophe caused already wholesaled copies of 12 Songs to be recalled from store shelves even as Diamond was getting better reviews than he'd gotten in at least a decade. Sony eventually reissued it in 2007 in a deluxe package but the damage was already done and the songwriter was deeply disappointed -- some accounts claim devastated. Ultimately, Diamond was undaunted, and decided to work with Rubin again because the producer was able to coax something from him that had been missing form his records since Beautiful Noise in the 1970s -- a sense of urgency, a sense of walking on the wire unprotected, at one with the song apart from its production. According to his unusually candid liner notes, Diamond took ten months to write the 12 songs that appear here. Rubin enlisted help from Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' keyboardist Benmont Tench and lead guitarist Mike Campbell, as well as studio ace Smokey Hormel to play guitar and bass, and former Chavez guitarist Matt Sweeney. There are no drums, but there are some spare, beautifully arranged, and unobtrusive strings by David Campbell. There is also a duet appearance on the track "Another Day (That Time Forgot)" by Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks. Ultimately, however, no matter who plays on or produces a record, it comes down to the songs: are they there or aren't they?
As good as 12 Songs was as an album of new songs, it was obvious that Diamond felt very exposed and perhaps somewhat uncomfortable in such a skeletal setting. He hadn't been in it with other musicians for decades and never as a recording artist. Yet there was obviously something about that particular process of creation that excited him. It's not merely the newfound comfort of the setting, it's the way the songs are written and delivered: presented by a guy with his beat-up guitar letting them rip without restraint, pouring them over the listener with the authority of a writer as well as the vulnerability expressed in newness. The beautiful piano and synth lines, as well as the elegant and/or edgy lead guitar and bass licks in these tunes, are applied with painterly care by the studio musicians in order to set off what is so dynamically and poetically evident in them. Diamond is not a young man anymore and, thankfully, he doesn't write like he wants to be one. That said, he does sound lean, hungry, slightly wide-eyed, and a tad wild. Check the track "Forgotten," with a rock & roll progression that could have come off of one of his Bang singles, yet reflects the travails and anguish of a protagonist whose heart bears hurt without the grace and wisdom age is supposed to bring; its desperate ache expresses the fear that it may be too late to reclaim the self-definition he was once so sure of. The grain in Diamond's voice is raw, tense, and fierce, and it quavers just a bit in the refrain -- as an exclamation point , Sweeney's guitar part nails it to the wall. The irony is that it follows "One More Bite of the Apple," another rollicking song, but this one is about reuniting with the protagonist's beloved -- but that love is not human; it's songwriting. This is an ode to the Muse, and the punch in the twin bellies of complacency and denial that can come with success.
This sense of willful malcontent, naked fear, and uncertainty illustrates some of the content in Diamond's liner notes about his writing process. Songwriting, however, is just one topic here; there are some beautiful love songs as well.