 Label: Columbia/American
Sound/Style: Sparsely appointed adult singer/songwriter pop
By Steve Morley
In spite of his massive success as both a songwriter and performer, Neil Diamond remains one of pop music’s most misunderstood and maligned artists. In the cold light of fame, he flailed fearlessly to define and redefine himself in an ever-shifting marketplace where honesty—unless it corresponds to the cool posture of the moment—gets a cream pie in the face. Looking back at his try-anything-once career, Diamond appears today as a musically endowed Napoleon Dynamite, a devil-may-care type who pays little mind to other’s opinions of his most misdirected impulses (most of which are exclusive to the latter half of his four-decade-plus pop lifespan). With the same spirit of bravery that led to self-revealing opuses like “I Am…I Said,” Diamond has exposed himself to further scrutiny in 12 Songs, an abnormally pared-down album that puts the singer under the microscope rather than behind the magnifying glass of arena-sized acclaim. Of course, that was the whole idea. Producer Rick Rubin, who co-helmed the project with Diamond, is also the man responsible for recasting Johnny Cash as a genre-defying interpreter on the series of albums that enlarged the Man in Black’s already looming legacy in his final years. However, whereas Cash had achieved icon status, Diamond is another case entirely.
Skeptics who have relegated the flamboyant performer to the geriatric dustbin may sneer at Diamond’s latest incarnation like adolescent boys watching the class nerd get a television makeover. The reinvention, though, doesn’t contradict Diamond’s somewhat chameleonic history. Those elements that have remained consistent—mainly, his distinctively dusky and dramatic vocal style, his unique spin on old school songcraft and his aforementioned willingness to risk ridicule—ensure that the artist’s essence is as present and vital as it was in his early ‘70s creative prime, though the presentation is markedly more restrained.
Having mastered the explodes-in-your-face-chorus format on “Sweet Caroline” and “I’m a Believer,” for example, and the no-chorus-required approach of “Song Sung Blue” and “Cracklin’ Rosie” (which are song-length pop hooks in themselves), Diamond experiments largely with low-key musical payoffs on this outing. Songs that at first seem like a dose of sedative, though, prove instead to be slow-blooming sleepers: the limply delivered “Save Me a Saturday Night” reconstitutes Merrilee Rush’s classic “Angel of the Morning” and drives home a memorable melody even without that song’s wake-up-call-styled refrain. Even “Oh Mary,” the ponderous three-chord opener that introduces the newly unadorned and showbiz-free Neil, possesses ad jingle endurance despite a heavy-lidded sound that vainly insists otherwise.
“I’m on to You,” a coyly-worded goodbye, is cast pleasantly enough as lightly simmering jazz in the vein of Van Morrison’s “Moondance,” while the disc’s sole example of pop spunkiness, “Delirious Love,” waxes nostalgic about the bombs-bursting exhilaration of teenaged lust at first sight. (A bonus version of the track features ebullient backing vocals by Brian Wilson—a pairing that would have once been unimaginable, based on the stylistic divide between the two legends.) The surplus of somber and autumnal relationship songs here is perhaps penance for such youthful dalliances. “Evermore,” which examines romantic wreckage from a middle-age viewpoint, hits painfully close to home on the subject of divorce: “Do I know you? Did I ever?/ Thought I did, now I know better/ Saw the signs but not the danger/ How'd you get to be a stranger at my door?/ You and me, thought we'd be/ Evermore.”
In past recordings like “Soolaimon” and “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show,” Diamond has played with spiritual themes while keeping the issue of faith at arm’s length. He appears to have crept closer to a concrete, personal notion of God on the new record, most notably on “Man of God” and “Create Me.” The latter is a desperate cry for wholeness (“Take me in your hands and shape me/ Wake me from this sleep to then begin again/ Create me”) while the former declares a seemingly self-initiated connection to divinity: “I'm a man of God/ Though I never learned to pray/ Walked the pathways of the heart/ Found him there along the way.”
Like the love songs on the disc, the above pair of tracks underscore Diamond’s tendency to oscillate between self-abasement and self-proclamation. As he pointed out on his existential manifesto “I Am…I Said,” Diamond identifies with the “frog who dreamed of becoming a king, and then became one.” On the oddfellow serenade that is 12 Songs, he not only demonstrates that he’s learned to accept both his crown and his warts, but also wears them well.
Audio Clips
Oh Mary
Captain of a Shipwreck
Evermore
Save Me a Saturday Night
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