My new job is a much longer walk
than my old one. It is a good job, but it isn’t as nice a walk, going through
an industrial rundown part of town rather than pleasant residential side
streets. It does have a couple advantages though; first it is more exercise for
me, and second I get a lot more music listening time in.
Disc 793 is….Tempest
Artist: Bob Dylan
Year of Release: 2012
What’s up with the Cover? Some kind of a red filtered
photo of some statue of a lady. It looks like it was done on Bob’s home
computer by Bob himself. Lo and behold, when I checked the photo credits I
found the picture of statue lady was taken from Shutterstock. Way to mail it
in, Bob.
How I Came To Know It: This was just me buying Bob’s
latest album on faith. Consider that faith shattered and no, I did not buy his
2015 release “Shadows in the Night.”
How It Stacks Up: I have 19 Bob Dylan albums. I put
“Tempest” at the bottom of the pile at #19.
Ratings: 2 stars
I avoid Bob Dylan concerts because
I know he just does whatever the hell he wants and audience enjoyment is
secondary. I don’t begrudge him that, I just don’t seek it out. After the
lukewarm “Together Through Life” (reviewed back at Disc 404) I should’ve
heeded the same warning with album purchases as well.
“Together Through Life” was
a bluesy record, and on “Tempest” Bob returns to folk storytelling with a bit
of Americana swing in there for good measure. As a lover of these styles this
should have been a home run for me, but this album feel flat.
There are some good things
for sure. “Duquesne Whistle” has a
timeless quality that sounds like it has been played by hobos riding the rails
since the thirties. “Roll on John”
has a rolling structure that feels like you’re falling asleep in a hammock while
the ship takes you slowly to Tahiti. The song’s feel is cleverly at odds with the
rough and ready life of the mariner it is about. “Pay in Blood” has a strong melody, even if it is Bob doing a pale
imitation of the rants of his youth.
Unfortunately, that is three
songs out of ten, and the rest range from forgettable to annoying. The album is
70 minutes long, meaning these ten songs average seven minutes to make their
point, which for most of them is just too damn long.
Worst of all these songs are
often Bob trying to be a rambling storyteller. This has always been one of his
strengths, and so it is really noticeable when he only manages average to
boring. Mostly I noted that the songs just wouldn’t resolve themselves quickly enough
and had a lot of writing you would expect from a novice songwriter, not one of
the all-time greatest.
The worst example is the
title track, which is a 14 minute abomination that tells the tale of the
Titanic sinking. I am just not interested in the sinking of the Titanic – I’d
rather hear the tragic tale of iron ore shippers on the Edmund Fitzgerald any
day. These chestnuts from “Tempest”
did not change my mind:
“The host was pouring brandy/He
was going down slow
He stayed right to the end/He was
the last to go
“There were many, many others/Nameless
here forever more
They never sailed the ocean/Or
left their homes before”
“There were many, many others” feels about as lazy a phrase as is humanly
possible, but then I remembered this was from the 10 minute mark of a 14 minute
song and Bob was probably flagging a bit.
The whole song feels like a
loose connection of rhymes strung together by a kid doing a history project for
his social studies 9 class or maybe one of those old codgers that show up at
open mic night to share their love of history through their self-published
poetry.
On top of this, the song has
little going on musically. It isn’t long before you’ve heard the same A and B
sections in the same order so many tiresome times that if you were on the
Titanic and it was the song the band was playing as it sank you’d jump over the
rail so the sea could claim you before the musicians bored you to death.
There are flashes of
brilliance on this album, and the production is very good. It is too bad it is
all mired amid a lot of forgettable stuff. I will keep the record for the three
strong tracks on it, but I won’t be playing the whole thing again for a long
time and when I do I’ll be skipping the title track just for the sake of my own
sanity.
Best
tracks: Duquesne Whistle, Pay in Blood, Roll on John
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