What does it sound like?:
I bought 3 albums on the one day and all were bought with trepidation – but with each I had different reasons for the trrepidation. Mary Gauthier’s album of last year sounded like another gut wrencher documenting her emotional torture after a broken relationship- and it was . Steve Earle has also had a break up but he should be used to them. His album was reported as straight up blues and I feared it could be just a bar band thumper and so far it seems that way.
Then there’s Bob’s newie.
It seems like he is working through his bucket-list of things he wants to do – Xmas album – tick,next up Bobby does Frankie. I wonder what’s next.
Most will know the background. He has his tour band playing pretty much live in the studio, doing stripped down sparse interpretations of songs that may not necessarily have been made famous by Sinatra but have at least been sung by him. Maybe these were just songs Dylan liked and the marketers packaged it up as a collection of Sinatra songs.But I digress.
The trepidation -well it’s obvious innit. Perhaps the greatest voice of a generation v Bob’s current grizzled, croaky worn out voice.
I’m gonna give this bloke every opportunity so I bought the vinyl to optimise the ambience – the cover,the ritual, the warmer sound etc. Surprisingly you get a CD thrown in with it -not just some MP3 download code. But I can’t see myself playing the CD. The record is one for the lounge with a whisky and that is where the turntable is.
I wont go through the track listing but It is no surprise he has done this record. He has recorded many cover songs over the journey and above all else he is a songwriter so he is going to have an ear for a well written song.And these are wonderful songs.
But that is not where the doubt is -it’s about the performance.
The band are ace – the stripped down sound and the instrumentation add a different dimension to other performances of these songs.And the production is superb too.
So on to the voice.
The voice, yes the voice. First listen and it was just a bridge too far. Half way in and Mrs Wells, after a particularly croaking ,cracking, quavering note looked at me and I looked at her – I’m not so sure about this we both thought. But I was sure. I had concluded that these finely crafted, superbly crafted songs simply couldn’t be delivered by such a weather-beaten voice even though the phrasing, and all the the other vocal skills were clearly in evidence.
So on to listen # 2. This time I was less focussed, reading a paper ( pipe, slippers, smoking jacket and whisky…actually no but it does hark back to Bob’s beloved fifties) and with the record not exactly in the background but less front and centre. I enjoyed it much more this time. I remarked that it evoked a world weary jazz singer in a smokey bar with some equally worn out trumpeter tootling in the background – Chet Baker I’m looking at you.They’re playing coz it is all they have ever done, all they have ever wanted to do, all they can do and all they will do . This is the Bob Dylan of 2015.In this context I warmed to it much more ,as the whisky was warming me. It wont be on high rotation, but it has its place and on those occasions it will be just right.
Trepidation passed .
What does it all *mean*?
Dylan is not doing this stuff as a flight of fancy, it is music he has lived through and loves. Everything about his shows, his film noir promo videos all hark back to the fifties .It’s where he is living, it is probably where he will stay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOxy_hy22CA&feature=youtu.be&utm_content=nllink-411df6de-smarturl.it%2F+BobDylan_Night&utm_medium=email&cid=nl%3A1092475420&utm_source=uscolumbia-bobdylan&utm_campaign=email%7C1092475420%7C20150302
Goes well with…
Soft lights, whisky or similar, warm fire, book or paper- or similar.
Release Date:
Might suit people who like…
Dylan. Early Tom Waits.
Great review. Pretty much captures my ambiguity about this record. First play, thought it was terrible. Second, rather warmed to it. Third, Mrs BB was listening and put up with it for two tracks before insisting on something else – and I couldn’t help but agree with her. This review reminds me I need to give it another go….
I wasn`t looking forward to the LP, wasn`t going to buy it, but what the hell. Prior to the first couple of listens I avoided reading any reviews. Put it on when I was alone at home, relaxed and it relaxed me even more, in a good way. The musicians nailed it and Bob`s voice held out, his delivery was perfect. Great album.
Cheers blue boy – just pick your moment. Maybe when she is out as hard to enjoy if others are dissing something
Lovely! That’s the only word I can find to fully describe it. It has the gentle feel of A Little Touch Of Schmilsson In The Night but without the honey voice, the beautiful arrangements and the coherence of one long melody. Still, his voice croaks nicely and the band support sweetly. It gives the impression of an old uncle attempting to impart some of life’s secrets before shuffling off this mortal coil. It is lovely. I can’t see me reaching for it too often, though.
Yes Tigger.
gotta be the right time, the right mood.
Perhaps unfairly I put on Wee Small Hours- Frankie’s classic straight after. What an incredible record.
Puts on my ” Bobbier Than Most” tee. Listens to the album for the twentieth time (alone naturally, GLW from Day 1 cannot be in the same village when it is being played).
It’s still a truly, truly, deeply dreadful record, an appalling travesty.
The songs are wonderful, the arrangements are fine, the production is excellent. But sweet Jesus, the singing, – appalling, awful, laughable.
Forget it’s Bob, forget all the history, forget all the background information that’s flooded out from Dylan HQ justifying this nonsense; just listen. Again, the singing is terrible, frighteningly terrible.
Poor sap that I am it’s my most listened album if 2015 but that’s it, no more, it’s in the bin; begone foul demon, begone.
Hmmm, getting strangely tempted. The tracks I’ve heard have fabulous stripped back settings and his voice is no worse than already known, and they are better songs than the Christmas album. Don’t think the current will like it much, or maybe me for buying it, but it’ll get her wretched Bon Iver off the player. Now there is a man who can’t sing for toffee……
Thumbs up from me – beautiful and completely un-hackneyed arrangements (take note Neil Young)
Course if it was anyone else I would not have bought it let alone persisted with it. But his voice now is no worse than Tom waits at his best.
No! No! No! Tom Waits’s voice is a colossal instrument of terrible beauty. Have you ever tried bellowing in tune? It’s much harder than you think.
And yes Tim , the arrangements are great and the phrasing also. This is a master songwriter appreciating masterful songs. Just a pity the voice isn’t the one he had just after the Woodstock hiatus.
Hmm…who is it that pops up on every Frank related thread to say that “Frank Sang Flat”? He’s wrong, of course. Me? I’d sooner put on Blonde on Blonde again than listen to Bob torturing these songs.
It was ianess, late of this parish.
I thought of it as a good companion piece to Willie Nelson’s Stardust album.
There are no Booker T arrangements here, but a similar world weary voice.
It’s the flaws & imperfections that make you listen more than once.
Degree of difficulty is not a measure of worth by itself Tigger.
Absolutely. If measuring only worth, Tom still scores highly. He emotes beautifully, for example.
Have you ever heard a love song sung so well?
A good deal of Mr Waits’ stuff passes me by but this is magnificent, real proper singing
Dear God, it gets worse. The most awful video of all time…
You like your hyperbole henpetsgi !
Hyperbole? Hyperbole? That godawful video would be laughed at if it was made by anybody else; cliche-ridden, nonsensical, no attention paid to the song lyrics, amateur special effects, hope Tommy Lee got a whacking great fee, just terrible, terrible.
I think there is some link to the lyrics – is she “the moon”…
Not the best track on the album and, whilst he had fun spending Columbia’s money, it just a teeny bit hackneyed to be ‘film noir’ zzzz.
I don’t think it is very good. Just worst made ever is hyperbole.
Well, prompted by all this argy-bargy, I bought it this arvo and gave it a good listen.
The band is brilliant, and while by any objective yardstick the singing is not up the standard of that bloke who sang flat all the time, I think it’s wonderful – the old boy clearly loves the songs and sings them with respect and sensitivity.
The GLW will be home soon – looking forward to hearing what she thinks…
I think the album is basically ‘quite good’ despite the challenges with his singing; it will never be as good as Sinatra but that’s not the point here.
I do object to Dylan’s statement that these are “uncover versions” that remove the supposedly schmaltzy string arrangements. For one thing, there was nothing wrong with those arrangements, even the much-maligned Gordon Jenkins stuff that makes up more than half of this set. Secondly, as far as possible with the lineup he has, the arrangements are mostly extremely similar, with the steel guitar taking the place of the strings.
I like the video : it’s a nice tribute to a more innocent era.
Great observations Mavis it would be like aTing taking the strings off some of those Bobby Bland and Etta James songs was uncovering them. I’m sure they would sound great stripped down but that is coz they are great songs.
Like saying not like aTing
Finally listening now. It’s bloody lovely.
And compared to the Christmas album, he sings like Marvin Gaye.
Leave Christmas in the Heart alooooooooone!
Don’t get me wrong, Moosey, I lurve CITH. Just saying that his voice here is proper smoove by comparison.
Wistful, melancholy, slick , professional, retro.And how is the phrasing?
Rather than raging against the dying of the light it’s Dylan sitting their in contemplation of it all.
Iain Shedden who writes for The Australian newspaper, and writes well and perceptively, asked rhetorically why bother? I sent him my review above and he replied….maybe I needed more whisky. I think he did.
Just listened to it (well 15 minutes) again – still frighteningly awful and almost beyond parody: nope correct that – it is parody.
Can’t be parody, parody is associated with intent, though you probably weren’t serious just embellishing the sledge.
I get that most people cant get past the voice.
I put it on rarely -have to be in that wistful ,melancholy, quiet evening ,whisky in hand type mood.
Cue “I’d have to be in a suicidal mood” or similar reply.
Strewth, never thought I’d say this, but I’m with the Aussie!
I like this album. I also like Kisses On The Bottom (the album, as well). I like to hear old men sing old songs in old voices. Old is the new young, anyway, so get with it, daddyo.
Don’t mind me, just squeezing in beneath HP to apply some kisses to his underside.
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Nnnnnnnnngggggggg …
I think this, the Christmas album and Self Portrait are probably his most divisive
Oh then there is when he went electric, no wait ..Nashville Skyline…hang on the Christian albums. Oh gosh, forgot the plagiarist set Love and Theft et al….
It sounds exactly as I imagined it would. Perhaps this partly explains my delight, as opposed to @henpetsgi ‘s utter horror.
Actually this isn’t quite true. I expected him to sound more gargley.
He doesn’t sound at all gargley. That’s what ruined Tempest (and others) for me, the full-on Curtains Of Phlegm sound.
I like the Christmas gargling. But if you read my blog you’d know that. Btw, it’s finished now. The blog that is, not Christmas. Well yes, Christmas too, actually. *sighs*
You have a blog?
That wild thin mucousy sound
Or with Phil Spector producing – the wall of phlegm.
Isn’t this the Sinatra one? Way to go, Frank.
At least it took Dylan and Paul until well into the 21st Century to finally lose the plot.
Bono (who, admittedly, never had a plot) went sometime in the 1990s.
Elvis went in about 1960. Yikes!
Jerry Lee’s marriage, Buddy dying in ’59, Eddie dying in ’60, Little Richard finding God, Chuck finding prison – however, Elvis’s appearance with (urgh) Sinatra on May 12th 1960 was the real clincher.
Given that Billy Fury’s ‘The Sound of Fury’ came out in the same month…..to any future historians out there…..that’s the date the baton got passed from America to the Brits.
Right there, May 12th 1960.