Young, Neil – A Letter Home (LP – New)

Get two of the coolest dudes in rock together and this is what you get. Neil came down to Third Man’s Nashville headquarters to record a killer collection of covers with Jack White, utilizing a refurbished 1947 Voice-O-Graph recording booth (which could barely house Clark Kent changing into Superman, but sounds awesome). This new album has the warm, primitive vibe of a vintage Folkways recording: live-to-one-track (mono) recordings of Bert Jansch’s Needle of Death ; Bob Dylan’s Girl from the North Country ; Willie Nelson’s Crazy ; Don Everly’s I Wonder if I Care As Much ; Bruce Springsteen’s My Home Town, and more songs that have personal meaning for Neil. This is a joy to behold on CD or 180-gram black vinyl. That joy gets ratcheted up in the deluxe edition here, which features two 180-gram black vinyl LPs (standard and audiophile versions), the album on CD, a DVD with footage of the album’s recording, a 12″ x 12″ full-color booklet, a download card for the hi-res audiophile version of the album and the grand finale: six 7″ clear-vinyl 33 rpm discs, the seventh of which features Neil’s version of Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind B&W an alternate take/arrangement of Crazy. An inspired collaboration crossing two generations of revered rock stars, with an ultra-lavish boxed set as the encore! Reprise/Third Man.