The good news was that, with much splicing and punching-in, the gruff, tattered voice that was making some Dylan fans say "please retire," sounded, well, kind of smooth. Like he was 60 again.
The bad news? He was wasting his time on a tribute album to "Mr. Frank," as Bob called him on a TV special years ago. Funny, Bob didn't actually SING a Sinatra song on that show. His tribute was to be Bob Dylan, and know that Sinatra respected that.
A SECOND Bob Dylan album of Sinatra stuff appeared. Oh, OK, he's treading water, and he had outtakes. We can forgive that, as we forgave "Self Portrait" and that dopey Christmas album. Even if you don't believe everything he does is pure genius, and that you can't criticize the rock God who moves in mysterious ways...you were hoping he'd do SOMETHING else.
Now? THREE albums of STANDARDS.
WHY? Oh, don't question the rock God. Just accept that he's doing what Willie Nelson did on that mediocre "Stardust" album, and what Rod Stewart's done to death. And forget that most rockers who have dabbled in 40's classics, from Joni Mitchell to Elvis Costello, only stuck ONE cover song on an album of originals.
NPR, where you can count on a sappy hipster to show a photo of himself in a jerky hat, led with the great news (which everybody heard by now) that there was NEW DYLAN. And gosh, you could go to VEVO and hear a track.
Do tell us more, NPR, which stands for Nattering Pretentious Radio.
Good Lord. Really whets your masochistic appetite, doesn't it? The same guy who tortured "Blue Moon" on "Self Portrait" (let's admit The Marcels did a much better version), is now going to mewl and puke over "As Time Goes By" and that favorite of Johnny Carson AND Spike Milligan, "Here's that Rainy Day."
NPR will tell you he will "reinterpret" these songs, but did he actually do ANYTHING interesting on those two Sinatra albums? Not at all.
He did not "interpret" any of Sinatra's songs in a unique or interesting way. The only "innovation" was that some sad soul played some mournful pedal steel in the background. Bob is a maligned singer (he CAN sing) HE is often the best interpreter of his own songs, which he can snarl, growl or gurgle. He's even slowed the tempo and screwed with the inflection on many of his classics, to create variations. But...if you want creative cover versions, especially of other peoples' songs, you don't necessarily think of HIM.
In fact, the songs from the "Great American" songwriters are actually so rigid that almost everyone sings them just about the same way, from Sinatra to Bennett to Torme to Jack Jones to Ella Fitzgerald to Peggy Lee to Julie London. Oh, Julie sang 'em softer, and Torme sang them with his "velvet fog" voice, but it's actually rare when even the masters of the genre slowed the tempo or changed the inflection on a lyric line.
About the only song that has a lot of different versions is "Love for Sale," with some ladies singing with a lilt, and others spitting out the words like a cynical whore.
But back to Bob. Our NPR wimp, after running paragraph after paragraph of what was just a commercial for the Dylan set, actually got around to making the obvious and valid point: WHY? WHY is he doing this??
The first thing I thought of, after "NO, NOT AGAIN," was...this is 2017. Trump has just been elected. Protests have literally seen people going WILD IN THE STREETS. We've got ISIS. We've got Climate Change.
When I heard there was a new Dylan album going out, I thought: will Bob go back to addressing issues, if only (to use a Leonard Cohen word) to emphasize that things are...DARKER?
No. He decided not to compete with himself as a protest singer. Never liked the word, he claims. No way he could top the stuff he did so many years ago. But he's not even doing what he did on the last few albums of originals (one of which surprisingly went to #1 on the UK charts). He decided to stop being a Delta Blues growler.
Instead: more 40's and 50's songs. He's telling the world to go back to before most of 'em were even born, and listen to "Day In and Day Out."
If you want to really give him the benefit of this doubtful exercise, then you can pretend he's seizing on irony in recording "Stormy Weather" (see, see, it's about climate change) or "September Of My Years" (ah, ah, he's acknowledging mortality). Yes, he covered the latter on his own "It Ain't Dark Yet (but it's gettin' there)" but why not underline it with a REAL CLASSIC about aging?
We'll let the GUY IN THE REALLY COOL HAT have the last word, where, cautiously, after all those paragraphs about what's on the album (will he go on YouTube and "unwrap it" so we can watch?) he mutters that he DOES remember when Bob sang "Masters of War."
Yes, the guy in the COOL HAT will allow for the "oddness" of Bob the 40's song stylist. "Oddness." He could've used another term favored by middle-aged nebbishes: "awkward." This is an "awkward" Dylan album. But whatever the "paradigm" there IS a question of whether Bob's still in the "zeitgeist." Or do you have your own "fierce" notion?
The "disgraced" Bill Cosby used to say there was a big difference between "hope and faith."
In this case, I have HOPE that the Dylan 3 CD set will be relevant, interesting, and worth hearing over and over. But I have no FAITH in it.
"Hey everyone there's a NEW BOB DYLAN album, and for the first time, it's a THREE CD SET!!"
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