“Follow that!” If there are two words that will haunt Neil Diamond to the grave, it’ll probably be the ones he was said to have directed at Bob Dylan as Diamond walked offstage at the Band’s legendary 1976 farewell show the Last Waltz. That the episode has assumed such notoriety speaks volumes about the way music fans once perceived Diamond. What he lacked in self-awareness, he appeared to make up for in self-regard.

All that changed, though, when the producer Rick Rubin sat Diamond down, made him listen to his Sixties hits – Solitary Man, Girl You’ll Be a Woman Soon, Red Red Wine – and made him analyse what was good about them. Released two years ago, the resulting album, 12 Songs, seemed to be the result of Rubin persuading Diamond that maybe there weren’t too many years left on this planet to remind everyone just what a great tunesmith he once was.

Placed at the very beginning, If I Don’t See You Again is clearly supposed to pick up where 12 Songs left off. Diamond’s affably artless fretboard technique frames a farewell to a loved one that, nonetheless, needs a melody to match its sincerity.

Of course, Diamond is incapable of singing anything with less than 200 per cent, gasket-bursting sincerity. Therein lies the tragedy of the songs on Home Before Dark – their creator has clearly sweated over them. But only a couple square up to Diamond’s past achievements: the crisp, twilit haiku to marital contentment that shares its title with the album, and Pretty Amazing Grace, a wonder-drunk hymn to love’s soul-redeeming power.

Elsewhere, however, the lack of focus and inability to self-edit is astonishing. One More Bite of the Apple and Act Like a Man hint at the struggles that Diamond seems to undergo when immersed in the creative process. “Songwriting,” he explains on the latter, “it’s just a little bit frightening/Like playing with lightning.” As ad hoc tutorials in composition go, this one shoots itself in the foot.

Cautioning its protagonist against the ills of “looking for love in the back of a limousine”, the lyrically top-heavy Don’t Go There is one of several songs that outstay their welcome by several minutes.

Though it would have been nice if Diamond himself had noticed these deficiencies, that’s the job he employed Rubin to do. On 12 Songs his sparse production revealed Diamond’s melodic flair – here, he exposes the lack of it.

Because of that, the back-to-basics approach that only recently seemed so exciting now feels like a marketing gimmick designed to make you believe that Diamond has somehow repented the cheesy alter ego who penned Forever in Blue Jeans and Sweet Caroline. But, cheesy or not, Home Before Dark could sorely do with some songs of that calibre.

(Columbia, TMS £11.99, call 0845 6026328)

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