Neil Diamond – I’m Glad You’re Here With Me Tonight (1977/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Neil Diamond - I'm Glad You're Here With Me Tonight (1977/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Neil Diamond – I’m Glad You’re Here With Me Tonight (1977/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:17 minutes | 842 MB | Genre: Pop, Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Neil Diamond

I’m Glad You’re Here With Me Tonight suffers from stilted, polished production, and a poor selection of songs; “Free Man in Paris” and “God Only Knows” may be great songs, but they’re not suited to Diamond’s easy listening arrangements. Only “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” stands out among the bland filler, and that is better heard on his subsequent album, also titled You Don’t Bring Me Flowers. – Stephen Thomas Erlewine
(more…)

Read more

Neil Diamond – Home Before Dark (2008/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Neil Diamond - Home Before Dark (2008/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Neil Diamond – Home Before Dark (2008/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:59 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Pop, Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Neil Diamond

Home Before Dark is Neil Diamond’s second collaboration with producer Rick Rubin. It follows the fine but ill-fated 12 Songs, which was sabotaged by Sony’s “Rootkit” program scandal: a nefarious bit of “copy protection” software that invaded the operating system of PCs and wreaked havoc. 12 Songs had to be recalled from store shelves just as Diamond received better reviews than he had in a decade. Sony reissued it in 2007, but the damage was done. Diamond, disappointed but undaunted, sought out Rubin. Rubin enlisted Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench and lead guitarist Mike Campbell, studio guitarist/bassist Smokey Hormel, and former Chavez guitar slinger Matt Sweeney. There are no drums. David Campbell did some skeletal string arrangements, but that’s it. In addition, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks duets on the track “Another Day (That Time Forgot).” Home Before Dark is a more exposed Diamond than listeners have ever heard. He’s out there, bashing on his guitar and singing from a position of extreme vulnerability; he’s on a wire without a net. His musicians understand what is so dynamically and poetically evident in the songs, and use painterly care in adorning them. Diamond is not a young man anymore and, thankfully, he doesn’t write like one — though he sounds lean and hungry for something just out of reach. “Forgotten” has a rock & roll progression worthy of his Bang singles. Its lyric reflects the travails of a protagonist whose heart bears hurt without the grace and wisdom that age is supposed to bring. The grain in his voice is fierce; it quavers just a bit in the refrain, and Sweeney’s electric guitar nails it to the wall. It follows “One More Bite of the Apple,” another rollicking rocker, but this one is about reuniting with his true beloved — songwriting itself. Home Before Dark contains some beautiful love songs, too. “If I Don’t See You Again,” the album’s opener, reflects the bittersweet aftertaste of lost love. It’s classic Diamond. His character converses with a reflection, a ghost. The gorgeously crafted instrumental bridge and the sense of loneliness in the protagonist’s voice combine seamlessly. The album’s first single is “Pretty Amazing Grace.” Diamond sings a prayer of gratitude for rescue and restoration, whether to Divine Providence, his lover, or both; we don’t know. His infectious, haunting melody is jarring, played in minor chords by fingerpicked steel-string guitars and anchored by a standup bass. Tench’s piano adds tension just before the refrain where the guitars get punchy flamenco-style and break it wide open. Strings decorate the backdrop, as the lyric juxtaposes the present against the past, not as contrast but as progression. The duet with Maines, “Another Day (That Time Forgot),” has shadowy traces of the gentle but brooding intensity of the intro to “Holly Holy” in the chord progression. It’s a joint confession between lovers who are lost to one another; the tragedy is they have no idea how they grew apart. Tench’s piano improv fills the space between verses; he underscores the melancholy gorgeously. “The Power of Two,” with multi-tracked, entwining acoustic guitar lines by Campbell, is an artful framework for one of Diamond’s protagonists to realize that he finally has the ability and courage to embrace another fully, and to allow himself to become a part of love instead of remaining apart from it. Home Before Dark is a less “civilized” album than anything Diamond’s done before. It is a stark and moving portrait of what an accepted artist found when he reached all the way down to face his fear, doubt, and knowledge, and brought the discovery into his work. Diamond proves not only that can he still write great songs, but also that he can deliver them with toughness and grit as an expression of real beauty. – Thom Jurek
(more…)

Read more

Neil Diamond – Serenade (1974/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Neil Diamond - Serenade (1974/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz] Download

Neil Diamond – Serenade (1974/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 32:51 minutes | 1,40 GB | Genre: Pop, Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Neil Diamond

Serenade is the ninth studio album by Neil Diamond, released in 1974.

Neil Diamond’s first regular album release for Columbia Records, following the success of the movie soundtrack Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Serenade is a slight effort characterized by Diamond’s attempts to make pop sentiments seem more profound by grafting more auspicious art references onto them. But whether he’s name-dropping Picasso or Longfellow, Diamond still has greeting card sentiments on his mind. Nevertheless, the catchiest of these autodidactic exercises, “Longfellow Serenade,” which combines comments about “winged flight” with the exhortation, “Come on, baby, ride,” was a Top Ten hit.
– William Ruhlmann
(more…)

Read more

Neil Diamond – You Don’t Bring Me Flowers (1978/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Neil Diamond – You Don’t Bring Me Flowers (1978/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 41:13 minutes | 2,03 GB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Geffen

Neil Diamond’s 1978 release “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” was triggered by the worldwide reception to the various homemade mashups of the title song, previously recorded individually by Diamond and then covered by Barbra Streisand. The two superstars teamed up to record an official version, sending this double platinum album into the top five in the US and the top 20 in the UK while the duet was an American number one smash hit. Diamond also scored another top 20 single with the song ‘Forever In Blue Jeans’.

(more…)

Read more

Neil Diamond – Up On The Roof: Songs From The Brill Building (1993/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Neil Diamond – Up On The Roof: Songs From The Brill Building (1993/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 55:56 minutes | 2,46 GB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Neil Diamond

This is Diamond’s equivalent of, say, one of Barbra Streisand’s Broadway albums. Come to think of it, it’s Broadway that Diamond is returning to as well; specifically, the corner of 49th Street, where he and many others turned out songs for music publishers. Some of these songs were written there; most were only in the spirit of that modern Tin Pan Alley. Handling the work of his then-rivals, such as “Spanish Harlem,” “A Groovy Kind of Love,” and “River Deep – Mountain High,” Diamond adopts his usual hammy style (he always sounds like he thinks he’s a much better singer than he is). Peter Asher patented a neo-’60s production style in crafting oldies for Linda Ronstadt in the ’70s, and he does the same thing here, which is only to say that the album is not as overproduced as some of Diamond’s recent albums, not that Asher’s versions are any competition to Phil Spector’s originals. Actually, this record sounds exactly like you would expect it to: just call to mind a familiar song like “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” and imagine what it would sound like if Neil Diamond sang it. While this is clearly a holding action from the point of view of Diamond’s recording career, fans can decide for themselves whether it’s valid and, perhaps more problematic, necessary. You pays your money…

(more…)

Read more

Neil Diamond – Three Chord Opera (2001/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Neil Diamond – Three Chord Opera (2001/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 47:22 minutes | 2,06 GB | Genre: Pop, Soft Rock, Singer-Songwriter
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Neil Diamond

Columbia records billed Neil Diamond’s Three Chord Opera as his first album of all-original material in 27 years (since 1974’s Serenade), which was true, but deceptive. Diamond wrote most of his songs for most of his career, but often included cover songs on his albums. It would be more accurate to describe Three Chord Opera as Diamond’s first straightforward album in a decade, since he followed 1991’s Lovescape with a series of all-covers albums, hits compilations, Christmas albums, and live recordings; his last album containing mostly (co-written) originals was 1996’s country-oriented Tennessee Moon. However you date Diamond’s songwriting lay-off, though, the expectation is that the result will be a more personal statement than his recent albums, and it is, at least in part. Diamond begins with “I Haven’t Played This Song in Years,” a melancholy breakup song, and he returns to the theme of romantic loss on “Midnight Dream” and “A Mission of Love,” while even the songs of apparently contented love (“I Believe in Happy Endings,” “You Are the Best Part of Me,” “My Special Someone”) are dark around the edges. But Diamond is too conscious of pop conventions to devote a whole record to one mood, and, unable to break through a tendency toward cliché, he isn’t really capable of writing a sustained self-examination anyway. So, he varies the tone with novelty songs like “At the Movies” and “Baby Let’s Drive,” and turns to unabashed sentiment on the lullaby “Elijah’s Song” and the religious “Leave a Little Room for God.” When Diamond joined with songwriting collaborators in the early ’80s, his compositions became more homogenous, but less embarrassing, while his ’90s work fostered the impression of him as a non-writing performer. Three Chord Opera is the old Neil Diamond, a wildly uneven writer with a certain ingratiating style.

(more…)

Read more

Neil Diamond – The Movie Album: As Time Goes By (1988/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Neil Diamond – The Movie Album: As Time Goes By (1988/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:06:51 minutes | 2,99 GB | Genre: Pop, Soft Rock, Singer-Songwriter
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Neil Diamond

On this lazy, nearly shameless album (two CDs that don’t even make it to 70 minutes combined), Neil Diamond visits movie songs past (“As Time Goes By”) and present (“My Heart Will Go On”) with stops along the way for takes on almost anything you would anticipate an album and artist like this would cover (“Unchained Melody”? There. “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”? Ditto. “Moon River”? Yep, it’s there.) Assisted by conductor Elmer Bernstein and an 80-piece orchestra, Diamond takes a 20-song stroll down film memory lane on The Movie Album: As Time Goes By with a bombast that often borders on parody. Oversinging like he’s never oversung before, Diamond makes even the most inspired tunes of the bunch (“And I Love Her,” “Can’t Help Falling in Love”) into Branson-worthy set pieces that are all melodramatic glitz and no style. A black stain on both Diamond and movies.

(more…)

Read more

Neil Diamond – The Jazz Singer: Original Songs from the Motion Picture (1980/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Neil Diamond – The Jazz Singer: Original Songs from the Motion Picture (1980/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 40:27 minutes | 913 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Neil Diamond

The most successful album of Neil Diamond’s entire career remains his soundtrack for the film The Jazz Singer, in which he also starred. Released in late 1980, the LP peaked at number three in both the US and the UK, earned a Grammy nomination, yielded three huge hit singles and has sold over five million copies.

(more…)

Read more

Neil Diamond – The Classic Christmas Album (2013/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Neil Diamond – The Classic Christmas Album (2013/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 42:30 minutes | 1,82 GB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Neil Diamond

Part of Legacy’s budget-priced Classic Christmas series, the Neil Diamond installment offers up 12 previously issued holiday hits, including yuletide classics like “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “The First Noel,” “Winter Wonderland,” “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and “Silent Night.”

(more…)

Read more

Neil Diamond – The Christmas Album, Vol. II (1994/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Neil Diamond – The Christmas Album, Vol. II (1994/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 50:21 minutes | 2,21 GB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Neil Diamond

Neil came up with a stocking full of unique arrangements of holiday perennials for this 1994 album. See what he does with The Hallelujah Chorus; Sleigh Ride; Away in a Manger; Winter Wonderland; The First Noel; Joy to the World , and more!

(more…)

Read more

Neil Diamond – The Christmas Album (1992/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Neil Diamond – The Christmas Album (1992/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 45:36 minutes | 1,92 GB | Genre: Pop, Soft Rock, Singer-Songwriter
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Neil Diamond

While Neil Diamond’s The Christmas Album is designed almost exclusively for his adult contemporary constituency, the vocalist still manages to light up most of the obviousness of these standards with his trademark gritty soul and flair for inflection. Opening with the grandeur of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel/We Three Kings of Orient Are” and “Silent Night,” the album is awash in rich reds and golds almost immediately. But Diamond has fun with “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town,” loosening up with a harmonica solo and a busy, up-tempo arrangement, and “Jingle Bell Rock” does just that with a 1950s doo wop vibe. These moves count as big risks on an album that otherwise tries on every possible Christmas album cliché: children’s choirs and histrionic adult ones, crashing cymbals, and tasteful piano that’s as warm as a fireplace in December. Thankfully, even when the choirs threaten to outdo him, Diamond keeps the focus on his famous singing voice. A stirring a capella version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” is a good example of this, and one of The Christmas Album’s standouts.

(more…)

Read more

Neil Diamond – The Best Years of Our Lives (1988/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Neil Diamond – The Best Years of Our Lives (1988/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 45:16 minutes | 1,95 GB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Neil Diamond

This album came when Neil Diamond was firmly entrenched in his adult contemporary niche. A/C can be so pandering it’s insulting sometimes, but when it’s done with heart and smarts it can be sublime. Diamond apparently gets that and for the most part makes adult contemporary that is actually for adults. It takes a master to croon “Cause I do believe in forever/it’s a place that lovers find” without making the sentiment cringe-inducing. And Diamond pulls it off. Despite that, even he can’t keep from sounding creepy when he sings, “Ooh, babe, you’re a hot little number” on “Everything’s Gonna be Fine.” Both he and this album are classier than that, and once you’re into the song it’s undeniable it becomes a feel-good anthem, and it works. Diamond was wise enough to co-write a number of these songs with master producer/songwriter David Foster. Foster writes his share of pabulum, but when he’s good he’s great, and on this album he’s in fine form. Diamond was also wise enough to tone down the production so that his rugged voice and the melancholy melodies are able to shine through. The Best Years of Our Lives is an album that is romantic and sentimental without being manipulative, and despite a couple of overproduced ballads that are outweighed by the other tracks, particularly the high-spirited and hopeful title cut and the subtle remorse of “This Time,” it is a strong entry in Diamond’s oeuvre.

(more…)

Read more

Neil Diamond – The Bang Years 1966-1968 (2011/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Neil Diamond – The Bang Years 1966-1968 (2011/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:01:41 minutes | 1,49 GB | Genre: Soft Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Neil Diamond

The Bang Years 1966-1968 23 Original Mono Recordings is an anthology of music from Neil Diamond’s career in the mid-60s. It features hits like “Cherry, Cherry,” “I’m a Believer,” “Red, Red Wine” & more.

(more…)

Read more

Neil Diamond – Tennessee Moon (1996/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Neil Diamond – Tennessee Moon (1996/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:08:03 minutes | 2,93 GB | Genre: Pop, Soft Rock, Singer-Songwriter
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Neil Diamond

„Tennessee Moon“ finds Neil Diamond duetting with Waylon Jennings, co-writing with Harlan Howard, and backed by the cream of modern country session musicians. It’s his Nashville move, and it’s bookended by two wonderful paeans to the country life. The album-opening title cut is a country-rocker that features some jangly electric guitar, pedal steel and fiddle, and a lyric about a songwriter leaving Hollywood behind and moving to Nashville in search of Hank Williams’ spirit. “Blue Highway” is even better. Co-written by Diamond and Howard (author of “I Fall To Pieces,” “Heartaches By The Number” and many other country standards), it rejects big-city life with the quiet authority of a cowboyish acoustic-guitar strum and a pledge to leave town via the side roads (because the interstate “represents all the things I hate”).

As it happens, the sixteen cuts in between, written with various Nashville pros, leave Hollywood only half-behind. Diamond still possesses the cornball pop craft that’s always served him well; love ballads like “Marry Me” or “Everybody” would work equally well in any city, in any genre, for better or worse. The best songs really do take Tennessee to heart. “Reminisce,” co-written and sung with Raul Malo of The Mavericks, has the dramatic flair of a Roy Orbison rock ballad, and “No Limit” has the juiced-up, acoustic country-rock flavor of the early Everly Brothers. Both songs raise the memory of Diamond the cool young rock craftsman.

(more…)

Read more

Neil Diamond – Sweet Caroline (1969/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Neil Diamond – Sweet Caroline (1969/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 39:57 minutes | 1,67 GB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Geffen

Although he managed to place three singles in the charts after joining Uni Records in 1968, Neil Diamond did not achieve a real hit record on the label until March 1969, when his fourth Uni single, “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show,” got into the Top 40. Naturally, Diamond quickly assembled an album to support the single, and it was released the following month. On it, the singer/songwriter to a certain extent followed the lead of the gospel-tinged hit, a tribute to a rural evangelist, by giving a country feel to the arrangements of such songs as “Long Gone,” “Glory Road,” and even the novelty “You’re So Sweet, Horseflies Keep Hangin’ ‘Round Your Face,” which, with lines like “You’re more loyal than my dog Sam/And twice as pretty,” was really a country parody. At times, the album betrayed the speed with which it had been put together, with songs like “Dig In” and “River Runs, New Grown Plums” coming off more as unfinished sketches than developed compositions. Diamond seemed to write on the guitar, and sometimes his up-tempo numbers didn’t get much beyond the stage of being basic rhythmic strums, a rudimentary melody, and a few catch phrases. (The arrangers tried to hide this sketchiness behind strings, horns, and female choruses.) His ballads seemed more considered, making songs like “And the Grass Won’t Pay No Mind” (a Top 40 hit for Mark Lindsay in 1970) the album’s strongest. But Diamond may have been aware that the material was mostly second-rate. Normally, Uni would have been expected to pull another couple of songs as singles, but instead Diamond quickly delivered a new single, “Sweet Caroline,” within two months of the LP’s appearance. When that song became a breakout Top Five hit, Uni added it to later pressings of the album.

(more…)

Read more
%d bloggers like this: