Bob Dylan - Shadows In The Night

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Oh Bob, what have you done?

I love Bob Dylan. His music has been part of my life for over half a century and, like many people, I feel as though a lot of his songs are woven into my very bones. He is one of the very greatest of all singer/songwriters, he has profoundly influenced the music and the consciousness of generations with his work and he has obviously earned the right to record anything he pleases. Most professional critics think this is very good. And even taking all that into account, I think this is a terrible album.

Bob's singing voice, bless him, has always been awful by any ordinary standards, but the way he used it and the superb songs he wrote to sing with it made it great in the context, and absolutely magnificent sometimes. I can still remember the sheer visceral thrill I felt the first time I heard Ballad Of A Thin Man, for example, and it's happened plenty of other times, but it's not a voice cut out for these crooner's standards - it really isn't. Tempest showed that Bob has still got it both as a writer and performer, but here he sounds feeble, tremulous, cracked and downright out-of-tune some of the time and that just won't do with this material. To me, this is painful and embarrassing. Even songs I like a lot, like Autumn Leaves, make me cringe inwardly here.

I say all this with real sadness about one of my greatest musical heroes, but it is my honest reaction. I have forced myself to listen to this several times in case it grew on me, but it really, really didn't. Aside from Bob's singing, much of the material is uninspiring, and the arrangements are decent but so samey that they sound dull after a couple of tracks. I have given this two stars because I simply cannot bring myself to give a Bob Dylan album just one star, but I suspect I'm being over-generous.

And now I'm off to play Tempest, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde, Blood On The Tracks, Bringin' It All Back Home and probably several more to remind myself of the sheer genius of the man and to try to expunge this hideous mistake from my mind. May Bob forgive me, but this is bad.