Phil Mongredien 

A Letter Home review – Neil Young benefits from forgoing studio trickery

Neil Young's covers album, recorded in Jack White's 40s vocal booth, is intimate and affecting, writes Phil Mongredien
  
  


Initially afforded a vinyl-only release on Jack White's Third Man Records to mark last month's Record Store Day, Neil Young's 35th album is a covers record with a difference. Young and White used a refurbished 1947 Voice-O-Graph booth to record the 11 songs here and the lo-fi production values and rudimentary instrumentation (it's mainly just Young and his guitar, with the occasional flash of harmonica or piano) make for an intensely intimate set. Without any studio trickery to distract from the songs, versions of Bert Jansch's Needle of Death and Gordon Lightfoot's If You Could Read My Mind sound particularly affecting.

 

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