Neil Young "A letter home"

poundhound

Can someone explain how an artist that puts such a huge emphasis of sound quality, can then release an album of such shockingly low sound quality?

Young highlights that listeners only get 10% of the real value of a recording from an mp3 due to the file compression, and has even produced his own music player (pono), that apparently gives the listener the full quality of the music.

His new album sounds like it was recorded from a television using an old tape recorder. The description on his website describes the album as "an unheard collection of rediscovered songs from the past, and recorded on ancient electro-mechanical technology captures and unleashes the essence of something that could have been gone forever"?!?

I love Neil Young and was really looking forward to this, but in my opinion, its a real let down.

Robotito

I agree totally. I am a big fan and will be seeing him for the 10th time in Cork this summer. I defended, and still do, his part in the RDS fiasco last summer, which was actually a good show if a) you were lucky enough to be close enough to the stage to hear it and b) were even a little bit clued in to what to expect from a Crazy Horse gig. There is no excusing the penny pinching by the promoter (aiken) though that resulted in an underpowered PA system and the 'bin liner' stage backdrop used. Anyway I digress....
A Letter Home is a bit of a joke IMHO. €30 for the vinyl? €150 for a special boxset version? It makes no sense as you said. I also refused to buy the Americana album, as I consider these albums to be misjudged at best. Any fan who has read up to any degree on Neil will be aware of his singlemindedness and willingness to follow the muse regardless of who gets hurt or left behind along the way, but the two albums I've mentioned are simply lazy and ill judged. When you combine that with the whole pono, high def sound argument he is pushing so hard then 'A Letter Home' just baffles.

loyatemu

listened to about half of it on Spotify but got bored. Neil does his own thing - his last album was great, but his output (post-70s anyway) is pretty patchy.

His argument about sound quality is that standard digital reproduction removes all the warmth and detail from music. Presumably this record being recorded directly to vinyl is supposed to retain that warmth even though the sound itself is full of noise. FWIW I don't think his Pono project will have any mainstream success - the history of music formats has demonstrated that the public at large don't care much about sound quality. Also its shaped like a bloody Toblerone - how are you supposed to put it in your pocket?

dharn

That album was recorded in a very lowtech booth, neil just loves to experiment, you can take it or leave it, I recon the record companies are taking the pee with prices like that