[rating=5.00]
With his latest ‘new’ release, a novel collaboration with jack White, Neil Young continues to redefine the career path of the veteran rock musician, often eschewing formal releases of new original material within familiar concepts and styles (leaving those to archive titles) and instead aiming for the idiosyncratic likes of this rumination on his past.
Executed as something of an excerpt from an aural diary, A Letter Home is more in keeping with Young’s iconoclastic nature than even the fruits of his labor with Daniel Lanois Le Noise. As such, it may be necessary to revere him as an icon to be more than mildly amused by these forty minutes devoted largely to cover material such as Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain”(which, perhaps not coincidentally, also appeared on Bob Dylan’s Self-Portrait). Neil also offers a take on his fellow Canadian’s “If You Could Read My Mind”, but it’s a professional run-through only, no more no less.
Bert Jansch’s “Needle of Death,” reportedly at least partly the inspiration for “The Needle and The Damage Done,” is vintage Neil on his own though, at least until he begins to whistle, a forced attempt to cheer that falls flat. The whimsy works better all around on Willie Nelson’s “Crazy” and, as spontaneous as it sounds, so does “On the Road Again” performed on acoustic piano. Contrary to the sense of rediscovery in the second spoken interlude, Young sounds emotionally distant on “Reason to Believe”, though largely through the familiar quaver in the singing, Bruce Springsteen’s “My Hometown” echoes with recognition of the passage of time. “I Wonder If I Care As Much” is hit and miss in its indecisive delivery, especially unfortunate as it’s the last cut on the album and thus, quite possibly, the impression listeners will take away from A Letter Home.
Spoken interludes at the beginning and middle of the album are addressed to Young’s deceased mother and if that sounds too personal for its own good. The tenderness in “Changes,” rendered solo with acoustic guitar, is at least slightly less chilly when juxtaposed with Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country” taken at a jaunty pace reinforced with sloppy but good natured harmonica. Sound quality is less important here than atmosphere the off-the cuff nature of which in undeniable, begging the question if it took longer to prepare for this recording than it did to perform it.
The matching sonic approach to the material involves live recording to a one-track mono device, an ironic approach given Young’s devotion to sonic splendor (including his Pono project), but then that’s part of his charm and that of this admittedly deeply felt reminiscence. If A Letter Home becomes something more than just a curio in his discography, it will be as a stepping-stone to more broadly appealing material in a reflective vein of much of the material on 2012’s Psychedelic Pill. If Neil Young has proven anything since resuming his career on Reprise Records, it’s how to challenge and reward his audience new and old.
