{"id":1681,"date":"2011-03-16T23:02:57","date_gmt":"2011-03-17T06:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=1681"},"modified":"2011-03-16T23:02:57","modified_gmt":"2011-03-17T06:02:57","slug":"neil-diamond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/03\/neil-diamond\/","title":{"rendered":"NEIL DIAMOND"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/NEIL-DIAMOND-M-Review-November2010.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1682\" title=\"NEIL-DIAMOND-M-Review-November2010\" src=\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/NEIL-DIAMOND-M-Review-November2010.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/NEIL-DIAMOND-M-Review-November2010.jpg 400w, https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/NEIL-DIAMOND-M-Review-November2010-300x187.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>N<\/strong><strong>EIL DIAMOND<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Dreams<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Columbia]<\/p>\n<p>Neil Diamond has made a remarkable resurgence as a songwriter during the past decade, but this album of covers finds him paying tribute to material that helped shape that songwriting brilliance in the first place. Diamond instills these classic tunes from the \u201960s and \u201970s with an after-hours ambiance that spotlights their melodic strength and lyrical power. High points include an Americana-tinged take on the Beatles\u2019 \u201cBlackbird,\u201d replete with splashes of hoedown fiddle, and a stately version of the Eagles\u2019 \u201cDesperado\u201d powered by little more than a soft-strummed acoustic guitar and a muted bass line. Vocally, Diamond has never sounded better, as he reels in the melodrama that\u2019s occasionally marred his previous work and instead opts for a more subtle approach. <em>Dreams<\/em> isn\u2019t perfect\u2014Diamond\u2019s lounge-y take on Gilbert O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s \u201cAlone Again (Naturally)\u201d falls flat\u2014but for the most part he inhabits these songs as if he was born to sing them. \u2013Russell Hall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEIL DIAMOND Dreams [Columbia] Neil Diamond has made a remarkable resurgence as a songwriter during the past decade, but this album of covers finds him paying tribute to material that helped shape that songwriting brilliance in the first place. Diamond instills these classic tunes from the \u201960s and \u201970s with an after-hours ambiance that spotlights [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[196,389,1177,1176,1175],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1681"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1684,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681\/revisions\/1684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}