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Up on the Roof: Songs From the Brill Building
(Columbia) (STAR)(STAR)
Like the Sex Pistols and the Monkees, Neil Diamond has made a career walking a delicate tightrope, balancing cool and contrived while managing to stay on his feet. It makes sense that Diamond wrote songs like “I’m a Believer” for the latter group, or could belt out lines like “And no one heard/Not even the chair” and get away with it. The appearance of Mary’s Danish on “Doo Wah Diddy Diddy” is the high point of this album, a crunching metallic remake sure to shock (if not rock) Diamond’s following. It is a funny, timely move; here, Diamond acknowledges that, yes, he is revered by a subterranean set that also includes the likes of Urge Overkill, and yes, he can dig it. One can only hope that Neil gets the joke, and that he will apply the idea to his own library of Vegas-style standards. The thought of Urge guitarist Nat Kato spitting out licks while the wide-lapelled one croons “Solitary Man” has delicious possibilities. As it stands, the rest of “Up on the Roof” is a pleasant, if sometimes schmaltzy, retrospective of made-to-order ballads-in other words, a vintage Diamond performance.
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