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Neil Diamond Tour

December 3, 2011 by · Comments Off on Neil Diamond Tour 

Neil Diamond Tour, Neil Diamond, somewhat disconcertingly, speaks the same way he sings. The same baritone voice. The same rich timbre. The same melancholy inflection. The cadence with which he once sang, “Where it began / I can’t begin to knowin’ / But then I know it’s growin’ strong” is the same one with which he now says, “Falling in love is such a wonderful feeling to experience at this point in my life.” Such is the effect that, were he to bust out in song (“Good times never seemed so good!”), you would not be the least bit surprised, but would do the only acceptable thing — which, of course, would be to answer: “So good! So good! So good!”

Alas, it never happens. But that voice, so familiar and warm as it fills the empty spaces of a salon in a Midtown Manhattan hotel, sounds as though it should be drenched in strings, his declarations punctuated by a majestic, descending horn figure
“Exhilaration,” Diamond says, “is the operable word this year.” (“Bah bah bah!”)

And when Neil Diamond speaks of falling in love, and speaks of exhilaration, he, of all people, can be trusted. No one in pop music has ever done emotion like he has, from the dark loneliness of “Solitary Man” to the spiritual yearning of “Holly Holy” to the existential rage of “I Am .?.?. I Said” to — yes — the sheer exhilaration of “Sweet Caroline.”

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