8 stars
So I’m going to fess up. While I consider myself the world’s biggest Dylan fan, and none of you pretenders out there can ever make me think otherwise, that doesn’t mean I love every note he’s ever played or sung. Frankly, Dylan started losing me following 1976’s Desire, the last from a 14-year, mostly great run of albums, starting with his self-titled 1962 debut.
My problems with Dylan’s recordings post-Desire began with Street Legal. All you have to do is listen to Blonde on Blonde and follow it with Street Legal, and any real deal fan will hear why that album was such a disaster and marked a series of missteps, plagued by everything from so-so songwriting to "wrong" arrangements to the erosion of a voice that was, in its prime, one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll voices of all time.
It is with great relief that I have been digging into the two discs of the "normal" Tell Tale Signs set (there is a pricey three-disc version). Thus far, and I am on my third listen now, this album stands as the best "new" music of Dylan’s post-Desire years. I believe it is an album I will continue to revisit, whereas even the best of his later work such as Oh Mercy, Time Out of Mind and Modern Times, despite some great tracks, never worked as albums I could continue to listen to again and again.
I’m not sure why, yet this collection of outtakes, alternate takes, demos, live recordings and other recordings mostly cut in the course of making Oh Mercy, Time Out of Mind and Modern Times, works for me in a way that none of those albums did. What I can tell you is that this album keeps pulling me back to it, and it just keeps getting better.
I certainly haven’t played all of the previously released versions of these songs back-to-back with the alternate takes, and there’s no point because these versions kick ass on their own, and as an album that I can listen to from start to finish. I did go back to a few, including comparing the Time Out of Mind version of "Everything Is Broken" to the alternative version that’s included here, and frankly, this version rocks in a way the earlier version just didn’t. This is Dylan singing hard over a tough blues-rock track. The curtain of Daniel Lanois reverb has been pulled aside. Very cool.
There are two versions of "Mississippi" on Tell Tale Signs, a song that previously appeared on Love and Theft. Originally it was done with an overblown rock arrangement. The version I really dig is the one that opens this set. This was apparently Dylan’s first attempt at recording the song. Here it’s a country blues and it’s just beautiful; both the sparse instrumentation and the melancholy vocal bring the lovely lyrics to the forefront. The song finds Dylan singing of regret but suggesting that maybe things are gonna turn around: "Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow/ Things should start to get interesting right about now."
After Desire, when Dylan began releasing that long string of mediocre albums that I try to pretend were never recorded, I pretty much wrote him off as a genius who had flamed bright and then flamed out. Beginning with Oh Mercy, Dylan showed that while he might never make the kind of fever dream music of Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde again, he still had it in him to make music that could matter to him and to us. Similarly, Tell Tale Signs is a revelation; it shows him as a mature artist who has been recording even more compelling tracks over the past 20 years.
You can still stream the entire album over at NPR and I suggest you do. This one’s gonna make my best of 2008 list for sure.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95047293&;ps=cprs
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his is album stands as the best "new" music of Dylan’s post-Desire years
-couldn't agree with you more. the free single "dreamin of you" he gave away via his web site from this album was awesome
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Nice review. I agree that the compilation of this material seems to flow in a way the albums themselves don't.
Usually, the knock is that everything after Blood on the Tracks sucks -- I like Desire, and have to confess a soft spot in my heart for Infidels. My view is that there are some good songs on some of these later period Dylan records, but as albums, they don't bear repeated listening like the older material.
Maybe it's because it was the first "new" Dylan record I ever bought, but I still play Infidels all the way through from time to time.
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Thanks for the great review, I can't wait to pick it up myself.
I agree... Blonde on Blonde... errrr
Cheers
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whereas even the best of his later work such as Oh Mercy, Time Out of Mind and Modern Times, despite some great tracks, never worked as albums I could continue to listen to again and again.
Yes! I have felt this in the face of overwhelming praise, again and again. Some good tracks, but nothing phenomenal. I always joke that if Dylan made a good hip hop album - that would be revolutionary. These albums are merely just more of the same. I also don't dig the sort of country time/leon redbone jazzyiness of hiss new stuff, so I really dig a lot of these alternate takes. I wasn't blown away at first listen at NPR, but I'll definitely give it another try. Thanks!
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I think one has to think about Dylan in a different way. It's almost like he is a different person than the one who made the great albums of the '60s and first half of the '70s. I think the turning point were songs such as "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" on John Wesly Harding where the song was a straight love song that, say, Willie Nelson, could sing. A lot of the Tell Tale Signs material reminds me of that kind of song. It's not "Like A Rolling Stone," but it's still really good. But he's not reinventing rock as he did by bringing poetry and a surreal vision to the writing in the '60s.
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I will get my mits on the new one soon, but have to disagree about the merits of his recent albums. Under a Blood Red Sky is not good, but you can not listen to Modern Times and Time Out of Mind, particularly on vinyl and not be gobsmacked. The man understands recording. I also like the soundtrack to Masked & Anonymous a whole bunch. Interesting covers, and the scenes with Dylan playing with his touring band are fascinating. Just my two cent's worth.
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Stellar review.
I believe that Tell Tale Signs flects the modern day resurgence of Bob Dylan and makes this sound like a new album that rivals Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft.
This album, like the two previous, have a southern feel. I don't know if you've been or lived there but songs like Mississippi breathe the essence of Southern culture.
We live in a time where the Minnesota Bard is creating some of his most compelling songs of his career. And Tell Tale Signs is reflection of this amazing times.
We are blessed to have albums like Tell Tale Signs come out.
A lot of gratitude needs to go to Dylan's manager Jeff Rosen who's keeping his legacy alive with these releases.
Thanks, Jeff. Keep these coming.
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That's a good point (John Wesley Harding) where he just really established himself as a univerrsal songwriter. I never thought about it, but I guess before that, when people covered it, it was obviously a Dylan tune, where as later you could hear someone singing a great song and think it was theirs, but find out, "of course, it's Dylan".
One of my favorite Dylan annecdotes was relayed via my wife. She saw Arlo Guthrie in concert and he explained what it was like working in the same field as Dylan - he compared it to fishing down stream from a really great fisherman. He said sometimes your just like "Could you at least throw the little ones back?"
Yeah, I'm not sure, in my mind, Dylan has had a complete, wear out the grooves, album since the 70's, but he can still drop an atom bomb of good writing on your head. I think out of the 80's, you have a track like "Tweeter and The Monkey Man" from The Traveling Wilbury's album, and in the middle of all that mediocrity, he found his voice again.
Obviously, he may never put out a Highway 61, Blonde on Blonde, or Blood on the Tracks again, but I'm not worried about his legacy, the man is still a legend. But then again, does he really need too?
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Nice review, and I'm pleased to see you write something with some length and heft. You should do more of this.
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great review michael!
i'm with dermarhrk. ; )
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Hey I wish I had the time :-) But I'm hoping to write some more reviews, and soon :-)
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hey michael, liked the piece.
i think the quote from arlo was: "no one ever caught a fish downstream from bob dylan.''
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Glad to hear you enjoy Tell Tale Signs - but it's a mistake to build it up by saying the previous three were subpar. [as happens all too often in the enthusiasm over somebody's 'next big thing' (case in point: all the gushing over Beck's "Modern Guilt" and corresponding dismissal of "Information" and "Guero.")] But back to Dylan: this man came back alive with "Time Out of Mind." Sure, that album is drenched in Daniel Lanois, but it's also about a man who can see the end of his life looming just ahead.
It's also what makes "Love & Theft" so glorious, because after all those funeral marches he comes out into the sunshine: lines like "hope I die before I turn seee-nile" and the goofy "hop into the wagon throw your panties overboard." This is a man who's left behind the ghosts of electricity of his youth. That quasi-mysticism is buried now, under heartbreak and wisdom and all those things that just don't work out. I saw him on the Love & Theft tour, and the man was jumping up and down, actually leaving the stage, during his guitar solos. Don't tell me he didn't mean it when he said "I'm forty miles from the mill, I'm dropping it into overdrive."