Our journalists will try to respond by joining the threads when they can to create a true meeting of independent Premium. Bob, Elton, Paul, Brian, the Stones…. And besides, it doesn’t matter.
• Rough and Rowdy Ways is released on Columbia on 19 June. of these artists are getting unearned rave reviews.
Please continue to respect all commenters and create constructive debates. Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways Plays It Too Tame: Review Dylan's powers persist but feel slightly squandered on this forgettable return to new material
You can also choose to be emailed when someone replies to your comment.Enter your email to follow new comments on this article.Are you sure you want to mark this comment as inappropriate?Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later?
It’s not musically impressive. June 26, 2020.
Dylan’s Frankenbride is some ghoulish fantasy of a woman without aesthetics of her own, much less a mind.Dylan’s erudite new album contains multitudes. There are bit parts too for Freud and Marx, Shakespeare and Liberace.
One nocturnal prowl, the entertainingly gothic My Own Version of You, is drenched in as much gore as Murder Most Foul. Dylan sends his first-person protagonist on a tour of morgues (and, weirdly, monasteries) to gather enough female body parts to build a new woman – someone who can “save” him, “someone who feels the way that I feel” – the kind of stuff feminists have met with eye-rolls since for ever.The song soon expands into an arena where Dylan can rhapsodise over Al Pacino and Marlon Brando and invoke saints Peter and Jerome. Like the album that surrounds it, it is also an ardent act of bricolage. As usual, the critics are full of crap on this one. Rough and Rowdy Ways is the work of a man in love with language and philosophy, and, at 79, he continues to take the pulse of the zeitgeist with unerring precision.
The songwriting is not impressive.
The title, lifted from Walt Whitman, is played off against blood feuds, painted nudes, Bowie’s “all the young dudes” and Chopin preludes – although the games come with menaces.
Start your Independent Premium subscription today.Sharing the full story, not just the headlinesOther songs find him in lighter mood. https://www.msn.com/.../review-bob-dylan-rough-and-rowdy-ways/ar-BB16hJVi OVERALL (OUT OF 10): 0 . Part of my harsh reaction to these latter-day albums is that they never live up to the great reviews they get, but part of it is that Dylan was once capable of a “Blonde on Blonde”, as you said, and there’s no use pretending his recent stuff is even close.Play Da Doo Run Run, Play One Fine DayPlay Phil Spector and his Wall of SoundPlay the Shangri-Las, Leader of the PackBRUTALLY HONEST ROCK ALBUM REVIEWS – WHERE THE TRUTH IS UNVARNISHED, NO ONE GETS AN UNEARNED GOOD REVIEW, AND SACRED COW IS ALWAYS ON THE MENUThis is indeed brutal, as advertised. He ain't no false prophet, he's an artist, he don't look back. I love these guys too.
Most of these new ones have a soft and sleepy pulse, although the blood flowing through them reflects difficult times and a difficult man.
Dylan warns: “I’ll sell you down the river, I’ll put a price on your head/ What more can I tell you?/ I sleep with life and death in the same bed/ Get lost, madame, get up off my knee/ Keep your mouth away from me…”Are you sure you want to submit this vote?Death shifts from the “madame” of “Multitudes” to assume the form of a bounty hunter on the flamenco-flecked “Black Rider”. Who could listen to Blonde on Blonde, then this*, and think, “Yeah, this is about the same level of quality.”?Yep. The most insightful comments on all subjects will be published daily in dedicated articles. Since I know how much more Dylan is capable of, it is possible I am too hard on him. For all its bleakness, Rough and Rowdy Ways might well be Bob Dylan’s most consistently brilliant set of songs in years: the die-hards can spend months unravelling the knottier lyrics, but you don’t need a PhD in Dylanology to appreciate its singular quality and power.Please choose your username under which you would like all your comments to show up. They’re equal parts finger-pointing and forgiveness. Bob Dylan – Rough and Rowdy Ways.
Yet, it seems like every music critic on the planet feels like they have an obligation to sing its praises, as though they are somehow duty bound to make it sound like this is a great album.
It … At a time of polarised debates, there’s real consolation in Dylan’s easy-going embrace of his contradictions and complexity.His first new material since 2012’s ‘Tempest’ is a soothing fit for the lockdown mood in which time and meaning feel strangely stretched and untetheredThe existing Open Comments threads will continue to exist for those who do not subscribe to Independent Premium.
It’s not vocally impressive. Is it a last boomer hurrah?
Due to the sheer scale of this comment community, we are not able to give each post the same level of attention, but we have preserved this area in the interests of open debate.
Don’t be fooled, it’s not.
That’s it.
I might not be so hard on him if he wasn’t Bob Dylan. It features contributions from several musicians, including Fiona Apple, Benmont Tench and Alan Pasqua.