Let me count the ways...
If you will allow me to digress for a moment, For someone who is just a little OCDish about lists and ordering the finer things in life, I have never decided on my favourite LP. It is just an impossible task. Albums are too varied, too nuanced to be able to compare and compete. I have a favourite song (John Martyn's May You Never, if you're interested) but album? No. I don't see how you can line up Joni Mitchell's Blue against, say, the Pixie's Doolitle or Miles Davis' Kind if Blue against AC/DC's Back In Black, or... you get the idea. Even in the same genre, or same band it is too difficult; I think Revolver is probably the best Beatles album from first track to last but then there's side 2 of Abbey Road which is about as good as it gets, how would you measure those two against each other? It's not just I wouldn't know where to start, it's that I just wouldn't want to.
However - and you can no doubt see where this is going - if you strapped me down and beat me with a stick until I nailed my colours to the mast on this matter and chose one LP to take with me when I go, it'd be Blood On The Tracks. It is a simply beautiful, timeless album with one fantastic tune after another.
While Dylan himself - the old goat - has on occasions denied it, the fact that here is Dylan laying bare the wounds of his ongoing divorce from wife Sara makes the LP even more powerful. I don't want to get all confessional on you but there has been a time during a particularly painful break-up of my own that I couldn't bring myself to listen to this album such is the nerves it touches. It's all there: the anger, resentment, pleading, self-flagellation, wistful reminiscence, feigned indifference; all brought into the sharpest of lyrical focus as only Dylan can.
What a start. Tangled Up In Blue. Track one, an instant Dylan classic. His voice is as clear as it has been for a good long while and the accompaniment is restrained, clean, perfect. For an LP which often wears it heart on its sleeve, the opening track is, lyrically, one of the more oblique. Styled - according to Bob - on an approach inspired from cubist art (pass that pinch of salt, please?), it was never going to a straightforward tale but the imagery is playful and enticing and there are enough lines to know who and what we are talking about. A wonderful opening.
The story becomes much more linear on the absolutely gorgeous Simple Twist of Fate - apparently a wistful remembrance of Suze Rotolo, the soul mate from the past - even though Dylan shifts between first and third person to try and keep a sense of distance.
By track three, You're A Big Girl Now, any mystery as to the origins of these songs is gone and Dylan writes with a startling frankness:
I’m going out of my mind
With a pain that stops and starts
and pleads for a second chance:
Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast
Oh, but what a shame if all we’ve shared can’t last
I can change, I swear,
See what you can do
I can make it through
You can make it too
It is a striking song - a lament - backed by beautifully gentle acoustic guitar. The heart can't help but melt a little here.
At the end of these postings I choose my favourite track from the LP. I'm in trouble with this one - we're only on track three and I've already changed my mind twice. And here's the venomous Idiot Wind, the plaintive You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go and the howling electric slide guitar driven Meet Me In The Mornings to make me change my mind three times over again. And we haven't even got to If You See Her Say Hello, Shelter From The Storm or Buckets Of Rain yet. The quality of this album is without rival.
Yet it is not perfect. Each of the tracks are musically exceptional and add layer upon layer of the conflicting emotions of a man amidst a relationship breakdown. And then, about two-thirds through the LP, appears Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts. It's not that it's a bad song - it is a playful tale with interesting characters of the kind we got on Highway 61 or John Wesley Harding. For an essentially one-riff tune it does go on too long, but it is certainly enjoyable. I just can't work out what it is doing here. Musically and, especially, lyrically it is out of place, as if someone thought we would need an amusing interval to catch our breath when, the truth is, we don't.
But, hey, that's just my two cents. I know at least one person of thinks that Lily, Rosemary is the best track on the album (they are clearly insane). And that's OK. Imperfections can become part of the whole and, in some strange way, enhance it. I don't want perfection - I want it to be strived for but not obtained - because then where would we go?
So I'll take this, Lily included. This is an LP which never gets old, which never fails to touch me, never fails to impress. Magnifique.
Out of five?
Five
Favourite track?
You're A Big Girl Now (but ask me again later and it will change)
Up next?
(I've been long debating this and will explain on the next posting but it is...) Desire
While Dylan himself - the old goat - has on occasions denied it, the fact that here is Dylan laying bare the wounds of his ongoing divorce from wife Sara makes the LP even more powerful. I don't want to get all confessional on you but there has been a time during a particularly painful break-up of my own that I couldn't bring myself to listen to this album such is the nerves it touches. It's all there: the anger, resentment, pleading, self-flagellation, wistful reminiscence, feigned indifference; all brought into the sharpest of lyrical focus as only Dylan can.
What a start. Tangled Up In Blue. Track one, an instant Dylan classic. His voice is as clear as it has been for a good long while and the accompaniment is restrained, clean, perfect. For an LP which often wears it heart on its sleeve, the opening track is, lyrically, one of the more oblique. Styled - according to Bob - on an approach inspired from cubist art (pass that pinch of salt, please?), it was never going to a straightforward tale but the imagery is playful and enticing and there are enough lines to know who and what we are talking about. A wonderful opening.
The story becomes much more linear on the absolutely gorgeous Simple Twist of Fate - apparently a wistful remembrance of Suze Rotolo, the soul mate from the past - even though Dylan shifts between first and third person to try and keep a sense of distance.
By track three, You're A Big Girl Now, any mystery as to the origins of these songs is gone and Dylan writes with a startling frankness:
I’m going out of my mind
With a pain that stops and starts
and pleads for a second chance:
Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast
Oh, but what a shame if all we’ve shared can’t last
I can change, I swear,
See what you can do
I can make it through
You can make it too
It is a striking song - a lament - backed by beautifully gentle acoustic guitar. The heart can't help but melt a little here.
At the end of these postings I choose my favourite track from the LP. I'm in trouble with this one - we're only on track three and I've already changed my mind twice. And here's the venomous Idiot Wind, the plaintive You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go and the howling electric slide guitar driven Meet Me In The Mornings to make me change my mind three times over again. And we haven't even got to If You See Her Say Hello, Shelter From The Storm or Buckets Of Rain yet. The quality of this album is without rival.
Yet it is not perfect. Each of the tracks are musically exceptional and add layer upon layer of the conflicting emotions of a man amidst a relationship breakdown. And then, about two-thirds through the LP, appears Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts. It's not that it's a bad song - it is a playful tale with interesting characters of the kind we got on Highway 61 or John Wesley Harding. For an essentially one-riff tune it does go on too long, but it is certainly enjoyable. I just can't work out what it is doing here. Musically and, especially, lyrically it is out of place, as if someone thought we would need an amusing interval to catch our breath when, the truth is, we don't.
But, hey, that's just my two cents. I know at least one person of thinks that Lily, Rosemary is the best track on the album (they are clearly insane). And that's OK. Imperfections can become part of the whole and, in some strange way, enhance it. I don't want perfection - I want it to be strived for but not obtained - because then where would we go?
So I'll take this, Lily included. This is an LP which never gets old, which never fails to touch me, never fails to impress. Magnifique.
Out of five?
Five
Favourite track?
You're A Big Girl Now (but ask me again later and it will change)
Up next?
(I've been long debating this and will explain on the next posting but it is...) Desire
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