Bob Dylan has released a new album, Fallen Angels. (If you have Amazon Prime, you can listen to its various tracks for free.) This is another set of interpretations of Frank Sinatra-type standards like his previous album Shadows in the Night (also on Prime).
Pete, resident Dylan expert here at the Cranach Institute, put me onto an excellent review of the album from the student newspaper of Cambridge University. I call it excellent as a music review because of its close attention to the actual music. Also of interest is how it takes up the charge that “Dylan can’t sing.” I quote the beginning after the jump, but follow the link and read it all.
From George Cochrane, Album: Bob Dylan – Fallen Angels | Varsity Online:
Just a little over a year since his Frank Sinatra covers album, Shadows in the Night, came out, Bob Dylan is delving back into the Great American Songbook again with this his latest release, Fallen Angels. Recorded during the same sessions as Shadows in the Night, it should come as no surprise, then, that Fallen Angels retains many of the characteristics which made its predecessor such a pleasing and rewarding listen.
Again, Dylan’s wizened croon is perfectly complemented by his backing band. Melancholy pedal steels slide and shimmer over the top of demure double-bass lines and laid back, swinging drum grooves. On the only real fast number, ‘That Old Black Magic’, jazzy guitars dance effortlessly through the chord shapes and scamper up and down the scales, injecting vigour and a welcome change of pace into the otherwise-easy-going track list. Always, though, the songs are sweet to the ear. The residual, and narrow-minded, criticism of Dylan throughout his career has been that he cannot sing – a criticism that has only intensified as he has grown older. When Dylan reintroduced himself to the world in 1997 with the stellar Time Out of Mind, the effect the Never Ending Tour had had on his voice became apparent. Bereft of its sixties’ shrillness, the voice was now deeper, gruffer, raspier. Over the past twenty years, however, Dylan has learnt to live with his limitations and even use them to his advantage. Replacing the silky smooth tones of Ol’ Blue Eyes with the world-weariness of a septuagenarian actually gives these well-known songs a new and poignant resonance. In light of the recent deaths of some of music’s greats, one cannot help but be aware of a pervading sense of mortality throughout the record.
[Keep reading. . .]
HT: Pete
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In