And then there was Pono! Or not. Despite prompt denials by the folks at Pono, it now seems likely that the still mythical, high resolution music player will not be delivered to customers, who to date have kicked in $13 million via Crowdfunder and Kickstarter, until early 2015.
To those trusting souls, those Neil Young fans with more cash than sense, I say, go look up caveat emptor. You should have at least waited until the bugs were worked out. Or not.
Meanwhile, Young continues to stay musically relevant and cut his own completely unique path through the world. He and wife Pegi are getting a divorce after 37 years of marriage. And in a classic Young move, right after he patiently sat for interviews in Austin at South By Southwest (mine is on this site), he went to Nashville and sat in Jack White’s Voice–O–Graph machine and made a record of covers called A Letter Home. One of those make your own record booths that were a big hit in the Fifties, Voice–O–Graphs were all about novelty not audio quality.
So let's review: the guy who is promoting high-resolution audio one day, is deliberately making a bad sounding record the next. Again, it’s a classic Young move: do whatever you like whenever you like, defy expectations, give everyone the finger and maybe even hint at a little self–sabotage.
The deluxe boxed set of A Letter Home arrived the other day and it is suitably grand, containing a pair of 180 gram LPs, a CD, a DVD about the making of the record, and a hefty booklet. The coolest wrinkle, one typical of White’s Third Man Records, is a box containing seven, two–sided, smaller–than–a– 45, clear vinyl discs, of the kind that amateur songbirds once got from the original machine.
While the list of covers is unquestionably great— Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind,” Tim Hardin’s “Reason To Believe,” Springsteen’s “My Hometown,” Dylan’s “Girl From The North Country”—and Neil’s performances are all compelling, the man continues to be one of the finest singers in rock history, the issue here is with the brittle audio quality, which comes complete with a constant low rumble from the machine, lots of crackling and moments where the recording speed varied. I played all three formats and the sound quality is the same. Young himself has called this “an art project.” Key Stereophile contributor Jon Iverson pegged it as being “a contrived antique.” Like every other recording that ever came out of this booth, this one is a lark, a plaything, an impulse buy. While there is an antiquarian, historical vibe in the sound of A Letter Home that fans of wax cylinders and other early recording mediums will I guess appreciate, it’s a crazy rough ride sonically for everyone else. Generous trusting Pono contributors, this one’s for you!
