Bob Dylan

Sandwiched between Under the Blood Red Sky and Dylan's later masterworks, this album and its sequel ('93's World Gone Wrong) are collections of traditional blues songs. Dismissed upon release, they provide a window into Dylan's artistic evolution as he reconnected with the old, weird America that would serve as a philosophical and stylistic template for his later work. Dylan has a unique relationship with time and history -- more pastiche than linear progression -- and by looking backward he plotted a course for his future.

If your memory serves you well, you will recall that Bob Dylan was unplugged decades
before MTV made it hip to be musically square again. Later, of course, he would inspire
generations of singer-songwriters to plug in. So when in 1992 Dylan decides to cut a totally
acoustic record of traditional folk and blues material that features only his own voice,
guitar and harmonica, he is just about the last artist who could be accused of ju... More >

Dylan's last cover album confused his followers mightily, not least because he called it Self-Portrait. And maybe he tossed this one off as per contract too--his boyish tenor and nimble acoustic guitar don't rescue "Frankie and Albert" or "Sittin' on Top of the World" from the taxidermist, and though "Tomorrow Night" could be a mean parody of Lonnie Johnson's sour-voiced original, it probably just sucks. But most of these old tunes he gooses or caresses to some kind of arousal--he clearly knows the sensitive spots of Stephen Foster's "Hard Times" and the antiredcoat jig "Arthur McBride." Not that he thinks such intimacy yields a self-portrait. Older than that now, he merely explores a world of song whose commonness and strangeness he knows he'll never comprehend. (Grade - B+)