Home Before Dark is Neil Diamond's second collaboration with producer Rick Rubin. Their first, 12 Songs, was sabotaged by Sony's "Rootkit" program that invaded the operating system of any computer it was inserted into and wreaked havoc on it in the name of "copy protection." The catastrophe caused already wholesaled copies of 12 Songs to be recalled from store shelves even as Diamond was getting better reviews than he'd gotten in at least a decade. Sony eventually reissued it in 2007 in a deluxe package but the damage was already done and the songwriter was deeply disappointed — some accounts claim devastated. Ultimately, Diamond was undaunted, and decided to work with Rubin again because the producer was able to coax something from him that had been missing form his records since Beautiful Noise in the 1970s — a sense of urgency, a sense of walking on the wire unprotected, at one with the song apart from its production.
According to his unusually candid liner notes, Diamond took ten months to write the 12 songs that appear here. Rubin enlisted help from Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' keyboardist Benmont Tench and lead guitarist Mike Campbell, as well as studio ace Smokey Hormel to play guitar and bass, and former Chavez guitarist Matt Sweeney. There are no drums, but there are some spare, beautifully arranged, and unobtrusive strings by David Campbell. There is also a duet appearance on the track "Another Day (That Time Forgot)" by Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks. Ultimately, however, no matter who plays on or produces a record, it comes down to the songs: are they there or aren't they?As good as 12 Songs was as an album of new songs, it was obvious that Diamond felt very exposed and perhaps somewhat uncomfortable in such a skeletal setting. He hadn't been in it with other musicians for decades and never as a recording artist. Yet there was obviously something about that particular process of creation that excited him. It's not merely the newfound comfort of the setting, it's the way the songs are written and delivered: presented by a guy with his beat-up guitar letting them rip without restraint, pouring them over the listener with the authority of a writer as well as the vulnerability expressed in newness.
The beautiful piano and synth lines, as well as the elegant and/or edgy lead guitar and bass licks in these tunes, are applied with painterly care by the studio musicians in order to set off what is so dynamically and poetically evident in them. Diamond is not a young man anymore and, thankfully, he doesn't write like he wants to be one. That said, he does sound lean, hungry, slightly wide-eyed, and a tad wild. Check the track "Forgotten," with a rock & roll progression that could have come off of one of his Bang singles, yet reflects the travails and anguish of a protagonist whose heart bears hurt without the grace and wisdom age is supposed to bring; its desperate ache expresses the fear that it may be too late to reclaim the self-definition he was once so sure of. The grain in Diamond's voice is raw, tense, and fierce, and it quavers just a bit in the refrain — as an exclamation point , Sweeney's guitar part nails it to the wall.
The irony is that it follows "One More Bite of the Apple," another rollicking song, but this one is about reuniting with the protagonist's beloved — but that love is not human; it's songwriting. This is an ode to the Muse, and the punch in the twin bellies of complacency and denial that can come with success. This sense of willful malcontent, naked fear, and uncertainty illustrates some of the content in Diamond's liner notes about his writing process. Songwriting, however, is just one topic here; there are some beautiful love songs as well. One is "If I Don't See You Again," the album's opening cut. It's about the bittersweet aftertaste of lost love, experienced by someone who knows the truth of what he's learned. It's classic Diamond; in that languid melody he's conversing with an anonymous "other" who the listener encounters as a reflection, a ghost, or a shared confession. The beautiful drama, the gorgeously crafted bridge, and the accepted sense of loneliness in the protagonist's voice are combined seamlessly with gratitude and a storyteller's authority, all of them unmistakably Diamond at his very best.
In the album's first single, "Pretty Amazing Grace," Diamond sings a prayer of gratitude for rescue and restoration to either Divine Providence, his beloved, or both; its ambiguity is no doubt intentional, but jarringly effective when offered inside such an infectious and haunting melody. It's set in fingerpicked minor chords on steel-string guitars with a standup bass as a backbone that stands quiet yet tall in the mix. Tench's piano adds dynamic tension to the ends of lines toward the refrain where the guitars get punched flamenco-style and the tune breaks wide open. Strings tastefully decorate the backdrop, as the lyric goes ever deeper, juxtaposing the present against the past, not as contrast but as a progression from darkness into the sunlight. It's a wonderful choice as a single and video.
The duet with Maines, "Another Day (That Time Forgot)," with its shadowy traces of the gentle but brooding intensity of the intro to "Holly Holy" in the chord progression, as fine as it is, is not the best song here. Its tale is the admission made by lovers lost to one another over the course of time, who have no idea how they grew apart, only that they did and love died in the process. The song, despite subtle sweetness in its melody and the empathic dialogue between the protagonists, is, in essence, a tragedy. It suggests that shrugging one's shoulders and walking away from love without a clue as to how you got there is sad beyond fathoming. Tench's piano improv fills the spaces between verses, and his sense of melancholy and foreshadowing is gorgeous. There is no overwrought vocalizing by either Diamond or Maines; no trying to convince the listener — the melody and lyrics handle that on their own. "The Power of Two," with beautifully entwined acoustic guitar lines by Mike Campbell, is an artful framework for one of Diamond's better love songs. With the fluid movement of the music, his lyric reveals that sometimes the advancement of age and the wisdom gained in experience do go together. The protagonist realizes that he has the ability and courage to embrace another fully; he has the desire to finally allow himself to become a part of love instead of remaining apart from it by protecting his heart.
The title cut that closes the set is one of those moments where the best songwriters can take minimal musical elements and parsed-down language, and reveal to the listener the very real sense of one end of overheard yet very intimate conversation. The narrative draws itself out as first-person speech and the melodic structure of the tune and the pop hook are subtle, almost as if to underscore that this song is private, yet its power can't help but draw one in. Home Before Dark offers aesthetic proof that 12 Songs was no fluke. This is a much stronger, less "civilized" album. It doesn't sound like the work of a veteran craftsman/songwriter simply doing what he does best or feels is expected of him. Instead, it sounds more like the honest work of an artist who has, at long last, reached all the way down into the scariest parts of himself and faced them in his work; speaking the truth of what he found there as honestly and as artfully as he can — without relying on the slick craftsman's bag of tropes, tricks, or artifices.
Home Before Dark is the work of an artist who finally realizes that he is, to quote Texas songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard, "condemned by the gods to write," and has to chase the love of that fate for life. Diamond is not reinventing himself here; instead, he's out there trying to prove — to himself first and foremost — that not only can he still write great songs, but he can meet his own demands for excellence by delivering them to his peers and an audience convincingly. He succeeds on all counts.
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