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ALBUM REVIEWS

Album reviews | Neil Diamond turns out another winner

• POP

NEIL DIAMOND

Home Before Dark

Columbia

*** ½

If 12 Songs, Neil Diamond's striking 2005 collaboration with producer Rick Rubin, renewed your love of Diamond's songwriting, the pair's follow-up, Home Before Dark (out Tuesday) is a must-have.

''Just go out there and face what you did before / Did it once you can do it once more,'' Diamond sings on one of the album's many highlights.

Diamond cuts deeper lyrically and the production is even simpler, utilizing hard-strummed acoustic guitars to carry the melody and provide percussion.

Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines turns out for the haunting duet Another Day (That Time Forgot). The album's first single, Pretty Amazing Grace, immediately takes its place on this songwriter's top shelf. Home Before Dark is a true contender for Grammy's Album of the Year.

As impressive as this is, Home Before Dark isn't quite as revelatory as 12 Songs. The CD is a more challenging listen given the near demo-like feel of the arrangements, and a few songs are overlong. The plodding Slow It Down, for instance, takes itself too literally. Still, Diamond and Rubin are creating a powerful body of work few could have predicted and even fewer could surpass. A third dozen would be most appreciated.

Pod Picks:Pretty Amazing Grace, Another Day (That Time Forgot), One More Bite of the Apple.

-- HOWARD COHEN

hcohen@MiamiHerald.com

PORTISHEAD

Third

Mercury Records

*** ½

It's been more than a decade between studio releases by British trip-hop pioneers Portishead, but the dramatic gap in time hasn't sapped any of the trio's freshness or creativity.

Third serves up more stylish noir rock that, like fellow Brit band Radiohead's body of work, can be at times difficult to quickly digest but is ultimately worth the investment. The album begins with Silence, which starts off like an experimental, instrumental jam, with a careening, downhill drumbeat and ragged guitars. Two minutes in, the cacophony drops out to reveal Beth Gibbons' signature haunting, longing voice -- ''Did you know what I lost / Do you know what I wanted?'' -- to create a distinct ''They're back'' moment.

The album is bursting with paradox. On the twisted torch song Hunter, which belongs in a David Lynch film, Gibbons' witchy yet vulnerable vocals are offset by massive, bending Iron Man-like distorted guitar riffs. The looping, chiming guitars and hypnotic beat of Nylon Smile somehow perfectly match Gibbons' Sylvia Plath self-doubt: ''I'd like to laugh at what you said/But I just can't find a smile.'' The fractured fairy tale The Rip, given extra eeriness by purposefully flawed guitar picking, leads into an unexpected, breathtaking electro-synth race.

Retro psychedelia sounds new on We Carry On, with Gibbons' monotone ''And on and on I carry on'' meshing with keyboards straight from The Doors' swirling Not To Touch the Earth. And the downtempo yet deliciously tense Threads finds Gibbons wailing miserably: ''I'm always so unsure.'' She needn't be.

Pod Picks: Nylon Smile, The Rip, Threads.

-- MICHAEL HAMERSLY

mhamersly@MiamiHerald.com

MUDCRUTCH

Mudcrutch

Reprise

***

Mudcrutch was Tom Petty's first band, a country-rock outfit that gigged around Gainesville in the early '70s to much acclaim, and hauled their guitars to California hoping to compete with the Flying Burrito Brothers, Gram Parsons and Poco, only to break up circa 1975. Petty and Mike Campbell wound up forming rock band Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers a year later.

On a whim last year, Petty put Mudcrutch back together for a tour and debut album.

The resulting Mudcrutch is the most spontaneous sounding Petty disc yet. Tom Leadon (whose brother Bernie was a founder of the Eagles) and Mike Campbell form a twin-guitar sound reminiscent of the Allman Brothers or American Beauty-era Grateful Dead (play the instrumental June Apple or chugging rocker Bootleg Flyer). The overall flavor could stand to be a bit more country; the single, Scare Easy, would not be out of place on a Heartbreakers or Petty solo disc. This is still timeless stuff -- from the Byrds and Burrito covers that sit well with the originals (Lover of the Bayou, Six Days on the Road) to the 9 ½-minute psychedelic jam Crystal River, perhaps the biggest musical departure of Petty's career. Petty hasn't been this likable on record since 1989's Full Moon Fever.

Pod Picks:Shady Grove, Crystal River, Six Days on the Road.

HOWARD COHEN

ELLIOTT CARTER

String Quartets Nos. 1 and 5

Pacifica Quartet

Naxos

Elliott Carter will turn 100 in December and the American iconoclast is still producing distinctive, densely wrought music. The Pacifica Quartet performed all five tortuously complex Carter string quartets in an evening, and this is the first of two CDs devoted to his complete quartets.

Written in 1951, the String Quartet No. 1 is a compendium of Carter's techniques set in four movements. Yet Carter's material is unorthodox in every way, from the pauses in the middle of movements to the spiky rhythmic flips, ceaseless tempo fluctuations and competing lines going at different speeds. This is rugged, gnarly music, but in the Adagio and final variations there are also pages of tender introspection. The Pacifica Quartet plays with concentration over the 40-minute span and its warm luminous tone -- first violinist Simin Ganatra in particular -- makes this music compelling and easy on the ears.

Written 44 years later, Carter's String Quartet No. 5 is a suite-like divertimento, crafted in 12 movements, nine of which run shorter than two minutes. While there are dark moments as with the eerie high harmonics, this is a lighter mercurial work with lightning shifts of tempo and rhythm. The Pacifica Quartet shows its mastery, fully in sync with the music's epigrammatic fragments and elliptical whimsy.

Carter's quartets are not an easy listen but adventurous chamber music fans should investigate this CD for his ear-stretching style. Performances are faultless and the recording is first-class as well.

-- LAWRENCE A.

JOHNSON

lajohnson@MiamiHerald.com