Here's a delightful vinyl review by Turntable Currents of "A Letter Home" by Neil Young.
(Thanks TC! Cool review.)
Also, see Reviewed! Neil Young, "A Letter Home" - Uncut.co.uk by John Mulvey:
A Letter Home, though, is also part of a larger, all-encompassing project: Neil Young’s ongoing attempt to memorialise and catalogue his own past through a patchwork of new songs, covers, films, autobiographies and upgraded reissues. Sometimes it can all feel like ornery sport, a way for Young to avoid releasing the historical artefact that his fans actually want – the ‘70s motherlode of Archives Volume Two.More of Reviewed! Neil Young, "A Letter Home" - Uncut.co.uk by John Mulvey.
This latest delaying tactic is very much in the marginalia of Neil Young’s discography, tossed-off by design. The suspicion remains that music, old or new, is not his greatest priority at the moment, falling some way behind the more pressing business of biofuel cars, science fiction novels and, of course, revolutionary new audio players (the key moment in Young’s last Uncut interview came when he cut short a discussion of music and barked, “More Pono questions!”).
Nevertheless, this sequel of sorts to Americana is an endearing little document, made more interesting by Young’s decision to render a predominantly ‘60s playlist in a way that would’ve been anachronistically low-fi in the 1940s. “Recorded live to one-track, mono, the album has an inherent warm, primitive feel of a vintage Folkways recording,” the press release trumpets, and the unsteady sonics turn out to complement Young’s wavering voice rather well. Young’s schtick is to use the Voice-O-Graph like a time machine, mapping wild trajectories between eras and dimensions, so that each side of the vinyl edition begins with a hokey “letter home” to his mother in the afterlife, much like the sentimental vinyl missives that were the usual two-minute product of Voice-O-Graph machines. “I’ll be there eventually. Not for a while, though - I still really have a lot of work to do here,” he notes, pointedly.
So who gets it? The fan Turntable Currents? Or the Uncut critic John Mulvey?
I really like A Letter Home and the way it sounds. And I totally get the "journey through the past" idea. In that regard, the letters that he reads to his mom make perfect sense and are very touching, even though neil read them in his typical kinda funny tone. No surprise there and the album's concept reaches his goal. BUT I keep and keep wondering how these renditions would have sounded recorded in a "love and war / peacefull valley boulevard / le noise / daniel lanois" type of production. They would sound even more magnificent. It would be huge. Just imagine "changes" and "needle of death" recorded in that fashion... Anyway it's just a fantasy :.) And the album is really nice. But at the moment I still prefer to listen to some of the solo tour versions which I think are absolutely extraordinary
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