Product Review

Third Man Records unearths Neil Young's A Letter Home.

Neil Young recorded a collection of covers with Jack White on a refurbished 1947 Voice-O-Graph recording booth at Third Man's Nashville headquarters. Imagine a very simple recording studio not much larger than a phone booth and you ll get the idea. He describes the album as "an unheard collection of rediscovered songs from the past recorded on ancient electro-mechanical technology captures and unleashes the essence of something that could have been gone forever." Recorded live to track to one-track, mono, the album has an inherent warm, primitive feel of a vintage Folkways recording.

As for the track-listing, Young chose songs that have personal meaning for him, such as British folk artist Bert Jansch s "Needle of Death" (which inspired Young to write 1972 s "Needle and the Damage Done"), 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 many others.