ADRIAN THRILLS: As his 80th birthday approaches, a sparkling gem from Neil Diamond 

NEIL DIAMOND: Classic Diamonds (EMI)

Verdict: Never seemed so good 

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JOHNNY CASH: Johnny Cash & The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Legacy)

Verdict: Revamped country standards

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NICK CAVE: Idiot Prayer – Nick Cave Alone At Alexandra Palace (Bad Seed)

Verdict: Sublime piano pieces  

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No singer made the spring lockdown look quite as relaxing as Neil Diamond. 

Sitting in front of a roaring fire, dog at his feet, he strummed his 1969 standard Sweet Caroline and streamed the footage on YouTube, the lyrics changed to reflect the age of social distancing: ‘Hands, washing hands / Reaching out, don’t touch me / I won’t touch you.’

It was a good-natured gesture from a solitary man who has been warmly chronicling life’s ups and downs for six decades. 

He sings Sweet Caroline again, this time with the original words restored, on new album Classic Diamonds, slowing the tempo down to a Latin bolero. 

It’s one of 14 songs he has revamped with the London Symphony Orchestra, freshening them up with stunning new twists.

Diamond, who turns 80 in two months, hasn’t toured since being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2018. 

But he remains musically active, and all the vocals here are fresh takes, his tuneful baritone superbly framed by the strings, flute, piccolo and timpani assembled at Abbey Road by Brazilian producer Walter Afanasieff and conductor William Ross.

There’s an understandable focus on his days as a hit-maker in big-collared shirts and sideburns. Beautiful Noise, a track evoking the rush-hour cacophony of the singer’s native New York, opens with an instrumental overture, and 1971’s autobiographical I Am . . . I Said brilliantly appropriates the laid-back feel of Harry Nilsson’s Everybody’s Talkin’.

Song Sung Blue is sung at a more stately pace than in 1972, Holly Holy substitutes the original’s pop-gospel flavour with Middle-Eastern sounds, and Stevie Wonder supplies a typically fluent harmonica solo on September Morn, a lush orchestral ballad evoking Frank Sinatra and the golden age of swing.

I’m A Believer — written by Diamond as a happy-go-lucky pop hit for The Monkees — is transformed into a moving orchestral lament, but its original melody stands up well to the change.

The three songs from his soundtrack to the 1980 film The Jazz Singer work well, too. Love On The Rocks benefits from freshly-minted percussion; Hello Again is a paean to longing and desire; while America, a celebration of immigration as a positive force in the land of the free, forsakes the original’s electric guitar for a symphonic swirl as patriotic as a Fourth Of July parade. 

Classic Diamonds builds to a tumultuous, two-song finale. I’ve Been This Way Before, from 1974’s Serenade LP, is overblown, but the slower Sweet Caroline retains the pulsating, sing-along quality that has made it such a fixture at sporting events.

With such an abundance of riches, there are a few glaring omissions. 

Red Red Wine and Cracklin’ Rosie are absent, and there’s nothing from the two albums Diamond cut with Rick Rubin in the 2000s.

But he has gone for the songs he feels work best in an orchestral setting, and it’s hard to argue with results that pack an emotional punch — and still leave room for volume two.

The pairing of Johnny Cash with the Royal Philharmonic yields a more conventional orchestral album. 

Using a template honed on albums by Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and Aretha Franklin, its compilers take the late Nashville legend’s existing vocal lines and add symphonic backing.

The appeal of The Man In Black’s original songs lay in their simplicity, and producers Nick Patrick and Don Reedman, assisted by Cash’s son John, don’t go too over the top. 

Cash’s deep timbre lends itself well to the RPO’s French horns and lush cello.

There’s also an intriguing cameo from rock ‘n’ roller Duane Eddy. A long-term fan of Cash’s ‘boom-chicka-boom’ sound, he applies his signature guitar twang to Farther Along. 

Elsewhere, Ring Of Fire smoulders without catching alight, but Highwayman — an outlaw country tune sung by a group featuring Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson — lends itself well to a grander setting

Faced with the postponement of a world tour with his band The Bad Seeds, Nick Cave took to London’s vast Alexandra Palace in June for a sombre but commanding piano and vocal performance that was live-streamed in response to the ‘eerie, self-reflective silence’ of the preceding months.

Filmed by Irish cinematographer Robbie Ryan, it’s out today as the solo album Idiot Prayer.

You don’t need an intimate knowledge of Cave’s repertoire to enjoy songs that are adaptable enough to sparkle in an unfamiliar setting, and Idiot Prayer has all the elegance of a piano recital, albeit one with masked-up camera operators, socially-distanced technicians — and no audience.

A planned cinema release has been put on hold, denying fans the chance of seeing the Australian behind his grand piano in a Gucci suit, but that does little to diminish the power of songs that are at turns dramatic, romantic and harrowing.

Six of the 22 tracks here, including the heart-wrenching Into My Arms, are from 1997’s piano-based break-up LP The Boatman’s Call.

Others are rockers transformed into something more graceful. The sedate tempos might deter some, but Idiot Prayer is a sublime memento of what Cave calls ‘a strange and precarious moment’.

BILLIE AND BRO KEEP BUSY

Having switched to jazzier styles on summer single My Future, Billie Eilish reverts to a more familiar approach for her new release Therefore I Am.

Written by the American teenager with her brother Finneas — and produced with nods to 1980s synth-pop and 1990s R&B by the latter — the track is a no-nonsense kiss-off to an attention-seeking impersonator riding on Billie’s coat-tails: ‘I’m not your friend or anything . . . damn!’

And Bruce Springsteen is the welcome guest on a new single by fellow New Jersey rockers Bleachers. 

The band, fronted by Taylor Swift’s producer Jack Antonoff, update the classic Jersey Shore sound by adding synths and strings to the guitars, and Chinatown is a promising taster for their third album, out next year.

‘Bruce is the artist who showed me that the sound of the place I’m from has value,’ says Antonoff, and The Boss is a powerful presence on a love story set on the ride from Manhattan to the Garden State.

Welsh singer Marina — once Marina & The Diamonds — employs an all-female production team to helm her hymn-like vocals on Man’s World, while Katy Perry has revamped her album track Resilient with help from DJ and producer Tiësto, replacing the original’s Eleanor Rigby-style strings with synths and a cameo from Spanish singer Aitana. A.T.