Post by I on Oct 16, 2014 22:47:54 GMT
Bob Dylan: Empire Burlesque (CBS)
THE CONTORTED soundtrack of Bob Dylan's music provides accompaniment to so many strange scenarios for so long, that the placing of his present output in any proper perspective is as improbable as it is imprudent.
This latest set of songs is an altogether more relaxed affair than the previous 'Infidels', there's nothing here so vengeful as 'Sundown On The Unions' or 'Neighbourhood Bully', with his temper raised in a general way only by the thwarted 'Clean Cut Kid' who becomes a Viet vet; though on a more personal level he otherwise protests throughout as usual.
The sound is leaden, a fussy laden dated potch which often serves to submerge the singer in its ponderous bathos - the involvement of Al Kooper, Robbie Shakespeare, Ron Wood, Sly Dunbar, and particularly the synthesiser of Richard Scher and screeching guitar of Stuart Kimball do little to enhance it - while Dylan is still burdened by the wailing female chorus that has dogged him since 'Street Legal'. Only where he accompanies himself on guitar and harmonica on the ironic, curiously tuneless final cut 'Dark Eyes' do we glimpse an unforced power.
Lyrically the album is shot with commonplace images and tired language. Dylan is never a singer in the classical sense, and his balladeering here of simple set pieces seems as devoid of spirit as of grace. His 'Tight Connection To My Heart' ties some loose metaphors, while 'Seeing The Real You At Last' and 'Emotionally Yours' are as mundane as they are maudlin.
"Even you the other day had to ask me where it was at," he sang on 'Blood On The Tracks', "I couldn't believe after all these years that you didn't know me any better than that." And still Dylan remains chary of of admitting to any special insight. He returns to the theme here with 'Trust Yourself' and, on 'When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky' says "I can't provide for you no easy answers". It is perhaps this obstinate existential which marks the weariness of so much of his later music.
This is the new Bob Dylan album, more of the same only less so
Penny Reel
Originally published in New Musical Express, Jun 15, 1985