Bacharach and Diamond's lives flash before your ears

Burt Bacharach and Neil Diamond have enough chapters of their own in the Great American Songbook that anything they add now will be regarded as footnotes.

But if these albums have the feel of epilogues to stories which finished a while ago, at least they are intriguing and moderately engaging.

Diamond's album, which recalls his 60s run of hits in sound if not exuberance, is the result of producer Rick Rubin convincing the singer-songwriter to go back to his 60s pop fundamentals. Rubin has brought out the best in many an ancient legend before, including Mick Jagger and the American Recordings series by Johnny Cash on which the Man in Black added his own twist on Diamond's Solitary Man.

Most of 12 Songs is just Diamond and his guitar in ballads dripping with the sincerity of the man they once dubbed "the Jewish Elvis".

Some of those are perfectly charming in their unadorned way, though the lyrics of a few can induce unintentional mirth, especially Captain of a Shipwreck ("If you're captain of a shipwreck I'll be first mate to your shame") is oily enough to make one wonder if it's dedicated to the master of the Exxon Valdez.

Elsewhere, Diamond delivers his personal variation on My Way - Hell Yeah especially entertaining as Diamond's life flashes before your ears.

Likewise, there's a Bolero-like momentum Evermore which makes it a highlight while Delirious Love delivers the album's fieriest moment by quoting Sweet Caroline at its start and strumming up the sort of hairy-chested exhilaration that shows how cool this uncoolest of artists can still sound.

It suffers from some quality control probs in the song department but it's an album which makes Diamond sparkle brighter than he has in years.

Seventy-seven year-old Bacharach's legend has hardly been forgotten. He's had Austin Powers cameos, tributes, cover versions (the White Stripes' I Don't Know What To Do With Myself) and albums with Ronald Isley and Elvis Costello (the great Painted from Memory).

Here, he's struck out under his own name on an album of songs which set his ruminations on American politics to the beats of Dr Dre and his own 80s-flavoured jazz-funk of cooing backing vocals, soprano saxes, and swirling synths and strings.

A sophisticated album that sings quietly and carries a big stick might be the intention, but it kind of drifts past sounding fabulously Bacharachesque in its chord changes.

Costello and Rufus Wainwright have the best melodies to sing on Who are These People? and Go Ask Shakespeare respectively. Burt - never the world's greatest singer - chimes in sounding a mite doddery as worries aloud about the world his kids are growing up in over the otherwise breezy Where Did Time Go?.

You've perhaps got to admire the guy questioning his own What the World Needs Now is Love with the track Is Love Enough?. But that track, like most of these, feels like a protest arrangement rather than a song. And At This Time emerges as the musical equivalent of a placard of such nice calligraphy you forget to read it.

Burt Bacharach: At This Time (Sony)
Herald rating: * * *
Septuagenarian king of jetset pop offers his thoughts on a world gone mad

Neil Diamond: 12 Songs (Sony)
Herald rating: * * *
The Solitary Man goes back to fundamentals with help from American music's resident career-revivalist