Neil Young: A Letter Home

This is one of those albums that thrives in the telling but is hard going, if intriguing, in the listening. Jack White, he of all things retro and cool, has a store in Nashville. Inside is a refurbished 1947 Voice-o-Graph vinyl recording booth, the kind onto which many a hopeful recorded their first song. Young, an ardent audiophile with a tape loop to his past, decided to record an album of songs that "are the roots of who I am musically", framing them as audio letters home to his mother back in time. So tunes by Gordon Lightfoot, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Phil Ochs, the Everly Brothers, Tim Hardin and Bruce Springsteen are filtered through a wash of primitive surface noise, delivering either sham authenticity or insightful recreation – take your pick. A Letter Home is available in three audio flavours: vinyl, CD and mp3, or as one box set. neilyoung.com Download: Needle of Death, Crazy