A Letter Home

I was a huge Young fan back aways and I remember loving his stuff in the late 60s through the 70s (if I remember correctly). However, after that, life jumped ahead of me and I didn't really keep track of his career as much. I have loved music my whole life, and over the years have picked up quite a few instruments myself and continue to play. I love almost all music (The keyword here is "music", so this excludes pretty much 90% of music that came out in the late 80s to the noise I hear nowadays when I flip through the radio stations), from swing jazz to hard rock and pretty much everything in between. When I listened to Neil I listened to majority rock (I consider rock any type of rock except punk, alternative, and pop etc. genres of rock), infact I think I bought American Pie when I bought Harvest, funny, anyways, point being I loved Neil as a kid. Years later I am finally becoming able to go back and catch up on what I missed. For my birthday about a month ago I recieved a new Jensen and some bookshelf speakers with a subwoofer. So, I went into the top shelf of my closet and the attic to dig up what records I had left. One album I came across was Harvest, (as well as American Pie that I bought around the same time). I put it on the player and just sat back and enjoyed. "Are You Ready For The Country?" is still one of my favorites off that album. I had't really listened to Young since I bought Dreamin' Man in the early 2000's on CD, but this was a blessing. All of this trigerred my memories of listening to the album in '72 (I looked it up while writing the review). After this I went online and bought a few albums for myself, and a couple of weeks later got to go to a record barn near my brother-in-law. This is where I found the "A Letter Home" album. I looked at it, and new I had to buy it. I also bought James Taylor's newer album Before the World or something, which, also gets a 5/5, and some other albums. Before I saw it in the store, I had never seen, heard, or known of this album before, so when I got home I dropped it on my player (not literally) and listened. The intro threw me off until I looked at the jacket for the album and had an OH moment. I thought it was pretty cool that Neil kept it low-tech and just him with his guitar. I'm a huge Willie Nelson, Dylan, Springsteen, and Gordon Lightfoot fan (oops I just named the majority of the people on the album), and recognized Phil Ochs "Changes" almost immediately. This is one of my favoite songs ever, and was shocked that Neil recoreded this song. I liked it just as much, if not better than the original, and was excited to hear the rest of the album. When most people think of Bob Dylan, they think of (obviously) "Blowing in the Wind", which was WAY more popular than Phil Och's stuff. "Maggie's Farm", "The Times They Are A-Changin'", and "Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol" also come to mind. I also loved the Blood on the Tracks album with "Shelter From the Storm", and "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go". Like the previous song, I knew "Girl From the Noth Country" instantly and loved how Neil delivered it. I didn't intend on doing a song-by-song review so I'll sadly sum up the rest of the songs on the album quickly: Needle of Death- Had heard it once, loved the deepness to it, rough subject Early Morning Rain- New take on the song, good old Gord tune Crazy- Basically clapped after it, can't beat some good Willie Nelson Reason to Believe- Love this song, just as much as the original (as with every other song on this album) On the Road Again- A folk-country anthem, cannot be recorded bad If You could Read My Mind- This was always my little song that no one really knew about too much, and this version was absolutely flawless. Since I Met You Baby- The piano on this is superb, classic lyric setup, great song altogether. My Hometown- Out of every song the Boss did, you'd think he'd pull something from the Nebraska album, this is a complete new face of the song, pure awesome. I Wonder If I Care As Much- Had never heard it before, turns out it was an Everly Brothers tune, I new "All I Have To Do Is Dream" and some of their stuff with the king, but that's it. This is an album you don't need to, but should listen to a few times through because A. It's a great album with classic songs and raw accoustic sound, and B. to get feel for it and let it sink in. There is real no way to listen to this other than vinyl, if you do not currently own a record player you can find one somewhere (there really isn't a bad one) and get this album. No modern technology can beat the quality and it has a warm place in my heart (aww). Overall, this was one of Neil's best pieces of work, and would recommend this to a friend any day. I wrote this review here because my son told me no one would see it anywhere else, and I'm taking his word for it. Stay groovy.

Brilliant and touching. Jack White and Neil are just genius.

For all those so called fans hating this... And yearning for a Heart of Gold every Neil release...wake up! And you obviously don't get it. He is doing what he wants to do. You either join the ride or get off. I will always be on the ride with one of greatest musicians of all time!

This isn't the greatest thing that Neil Young has done but I thought it was a good listen and an interesting look at the past.

Just keep doing what you do Neil. Some will get it, some won't.

Huge Neil fan, he’s my favorite artist of all time, I have 50 of his albums. This is easily the worst album I have ever heard, in fact, the recording is SO bad (crackly/ lo fi) ON PURPOSE that its unlistenable. Instant headache. Sounds HORRIBLE. DO NOT BUY UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE, not even if you have every other Neil album ever made and need this to complete collection.

To the reviewer who said it sounds like Neil recorded this in the phone booth on the cover, it's funny you should say that, as he did. It's a gadget called a Voice-o-Graph, which back in the 1940s, people use to be able to use at carnivals like photo booths. They could record a couple of minutes of whatever they wanted and the machine would cut a disc for them. As the album cover bears out, the price for using this one must have been 35 cents. An album of intentionally old-and-scratchy sounding versions of old songs is a weird concept, and It's not necessarily a brilliant album, but I'm charmed by it. If you appreciate quirky Neil and his experiments, give it a whirl.

I have been a huge NY fan for 45 years - I have seen him live in various incarnations well over 30 times and own every record/CD he has ever realeased. This is NOT a good record....neither was Psychedelic Pill nor his massacre of the folk songs CD with Crazy Horse. These songs are all done much better by the artist that originally performed them. Anyone who thinks this is great music needs to listen to Everybody Know this is Nowhere, After the Goldrush, Zuma, Rust Never Sleeps, Comes A Time, Tonights the Night etc. or any of the live CDs released through the Archives collections and then compare this effort to those in terms of quality. This music is sadly lacking in every way in my opinion.

Again Neil steps forward do what real artist do, they create. Neil has never been afraid to do the different project. Isn't that what we really want from the artist we follow? Try it for how it is intended, you may just like it.

Neil is a genius. I heard this the first time on Thrasher's Wheat radio and thought it was good but nothing special. But like most Neil records the songs just get better and better the more you listen.