Damn, this is hard to say but…
…the new-to-me Neil Diamond album 12 Songs (2005) is pretty damned good.
Wow. Either I’m old or he put out a decent album. Maybe both, yeah.
It might also be due to the fact that, as Amazon observes
… “What’s It Gonna Be” sounds like something snatched in a pre-dawn lark from a Leonard Cohen disc.
…he sounds rather like Cohen, one of my all-time favorites.
Personal favorites after a dozen or so listens: “I’m on to you”, “Hell Yeah”, “Delirious Love”, “Man of God” and “Oh Mary”. The only one I regularly skip is “Save Me a Saturday Night”, which is weak compared to the rest.
I blame Jason for this - he loaned me his ipod shuffle on the train back from Vernezza to Milan, and it had the album on it. Shuffles lack a display, and Jason is a Hip Young Dude, so I just assumed that Neil Diamond was too uncool for him. Getting off the train, I said something like “Dude, you have some band on there that sounds exactly like Neil Diamond!”
He was amused. I now have the album. Join me in my shame, won’t you?
