Bob Dylan’s thirty-fifth studio album offers an upbeat
old-time blues and bluegrass-sound, and deals with themes of death with fierce
grace.
The gravelly
growl of the voice of experience, ragged, resonant, and reference-rich. Dylan’s
double-entendre-laden and cracked, sardonic whispers roll by in couplets
tumbleweed-like.
On
recognizing the “forests of the night” allusion to William Blake’s “The Tyger,”
glee scarcely contained.
The beer
garden rhythm of the album’s namesake (and yes, I still call them namesakes)
can’t help but slosh invisible upraised steins—for almost fourteen minutes!
Though the lyrics concern the oft-dredged, always applicable disaster of The
Titanic, the sound just says good times.
The second
song, “Soon After Midnight,” is, at three minutes and twenty-eight seconds, the
shortest and the sweetest of the bunch. “Scarlet Town” features banjos,
bluegrass, and—like all of the ten songs on Tempest—plenty
of focus on the words.
Then again,
compare “Early Roman Kings” with Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy” and hear in the
unmistakable beat Bob’s homage to the great blues legend. He’s that old guy
now.
Haunting and
hypnotic, “Tin Angel” paves the way for “Roll On John,” Dylan’s ode to John
Lennon.
“Tempest” is
not a depressing album at all. Neither is it his jauntiest. Even if you’ve
never heard of the guy, hey, it’s at least decent background music.
“We cried on
a cold and frosty morn,” says the guy who wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind” in his
patented nasal sandpaper hiss. “We cried because our souls were torn / So much
for these tears / So much for these long and wasted years.” Baby Boomers take
note: Bob makes being 71 hip.
To be sure, Blonde On Blonde is still his best studio album. And he’s got some
that I don’t think even he can stand.
But Tempest ranks high, even calling to mind
Shakespeare’s play of the same name. Prospero-like, the venerable poet pulls
together veritable strands right out of his career, so to speak.
And behold,
a marvel!
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