BOB DYLAN: FALLEN ANGELS (2016)
1) Young At Heart; 2) Maybe
You'll Be There; 3) Polka Dots And Moonbeams; 4) All The Way; 5) Skylark; 6)
Nevertheless; 7) All Or Nothing At All; 8) On A Little Street In Singapore; 9)
It Had To Be You; 10) Melancholy Mood; 11) That Old Black Magic; 12) Come Rain
Or Come Shine.
Bob is well known for doing the same thing
twice or thrice if he got a good kick out of it first time around: so, just as Good As I've Been To You was quickly
followed up by World Gone Wrong
(because there's nothing like a satisfactory refill of the good stuff), one
album of Sinatra covers was quickly followed by another — and no, from what I
can tell, it's not as if all the material was recorded during the same
session. There is even a slight stylistic difference: Fallen Angels features a smaller band, with no brass support
whatsoever, so that the «wee small hours» atmosphere is generated to
near-perfection.
That said, I am not even going to try to comment on any of the actual
songs — it is totally and utterly irrelevant whether Bob «does justice» to the
old versions, and I cannot take seriously any review of Fallen Angels that tries to make meaningful comparisons between
Sinatra and Dylan. It seems as clear as daylight that the main, if not only,
goal of Fallen Angels is to
strengthen and solidify the statement of Shadows
In The Night — namely, that you can never pigeonhole Robert Zimmerman,
because Robert Zimmerman refuses to wear the yellow star of the pigeon. You
gambled on the man putting out another Tempest
in 2015? You lost, sucker. You gambled that, okay, he had this weird diversion,
but next year he'd put out another Tempest? You lost again. See, the man's
been collecting from you for over fifty years now, and so far, he's shown no
signs of stopping.
Of course, it's a pretty wise gamble: with time
mercilessly rolling by, as each new record's chances of becoming his last
increase significantly, these quiet, introspective, melancholy-filled tributes
to Sinatra all work like ideal swansongs. But it's also obvious (well, not obvious, really: nothing is ever truly
obvious with Dylan) that he is not
going to stop, and that his next move could be anything — from yet a third album of Sinatra covers (and why
not? he had three Christian albums
out, didn't he?) to a bunch of acid house rearrangements of Dolly Parton.
That's what we love him for, and that's what he is going to keep on doing. As
for Fallen Angels, well... I did
listen to it twice, and I'll probably never listen to it again. Don't try to
make the mistake of taking it too seriously — although if you somehow happen to
love the results, there's nothing criminal about that, either (I do love Self-Portrait, after all; but then Self-Portrait was far more diverse, inventive, and unpredictable
than these albums, where all the songs follow the same formula — take Sinatra's
orchestrated songbook and adapt it for small lite-jazz combo). Just remember
that, behind all the seriousness and «depth» of these renditions, he is still
putting you on, and you'll never know
the truth, because, as Keith Moon once eloquently put it, «you couldn't afford
me!»
I got a lot more out of Shadows than I did this one. Here's my take: http://everybodysdummy.blogspot.com/2016/05/bob-dylan-59-fallen-angels.html
ReplyDeleteTickled at the prospect of back-to-back Dylan reviews this weekend.
ReplyDeleteWas at the Dylan concert in Berkeley a couple of months ago and by the looks of it, some of the prophecies that GS has made regarding future Dylan albums may not materialize. But again, GS would be the first to remind me that you can always trust the man to do the unexpected. So, there is that.
However, the setlist for the evening was entirely predictable (going by his recent concerts). Alternate between the Sinatraesque material from Shadows and Fallen where Dylan would sit at the piano (which was placed right of stage with Dylan sitting in the middle of the stage, how odd is that, maybe this was his way of saying Now you did not expect me to do that, did you?). Every other song was from his early period (meaning 2012 - Tempest). Anyway, it did not matter, nobody would have minded anything, most came just to be in his radius. He gave no indication that he had noticed that there was a strong cheering crowd in front him and, of course, the crowd expected nothing else. His manner was very awkward when he was not playing on the piano - he did not play any guitar - he would just amble across to the front, one hand on his hip which would open his coat on one side and then deliver his raspy notes. He did go to work on the harmonica for the occasional song. For instrumental interludes, he would amble backwards and assume a similar hand-cocked-on-hip-on-bent-knee position. On occasion, he did move sideways but ended up obscuring the drummer and once he realized that, he would shuffle across to let everyone see the drummer. The net effect could be summed up thus: A drunk dressed up as Bob Dylan who had accidentally wandered onto the stage of a Bob Dylan concert. But he did close with Blowin' in the Wind and everyone was happy.