Friday, October 21, 2011

Dylan Album Project: Dylan

Dylan (1973)

When his contract ran out with Columbia, Dylan jumped ship to David Geffen’s new label, Asylum. As revenge, Columbia released Dylan, a collection of mostly covers used as rehearsals for New Morning and a couple outtakes from Self Portrait. They remixed them to sound as horrible as possible and then released them as though they were a real album. This is a true stinker. This doesn’t deserve a list of rhymes, images and axioms. Usually when Dylan does covers album, they are interesting enough to produce their own rhymes and such, but not on this one.

Best song: Lily of the West – If I were to pick one song to keep form this album, this would be it. More or less a traditional folk song, along the lines of “Days of ‘49” or “Copper Kettle.” This murder ballad features the speaker killing his beloved’s man, then forgiving her in court.

Worst song: Spanish is the Loving Tongue – If you compare this with the single version which just Dylan on piano, it becomes obvious how important a song’s arrangement is.

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