Bob Dylan Triplicate

SHOULD there be anyone on earth still harbouring doubts that Bob Dylan is no longer a protest singer, his decision to release a triple album of saloon-bar standards two months after the accession of President Trump ought to seal the deal. At 75, the contrary old cove remains as mercurial as ever, radical in his non-radicalness.

- Graeme Thomson

The tendency with contemporary ‘pop’ takes on songs from the Great American Songbook is to give ’em the old razzle-dazzle: stick a metaphorical bow-tie on them, throw in a few finger-snapping Jack Jones licks and send them off to Vegas. Which can be fun in a Saturday-night TV kind of way, but risks fundamentally undermining the melancholic impetus that lurks in their soul, not to mention the beautiful, ornate interplay between language, mood and melody.

The interpretations recorded by Dylan over the past few years have eschewed this glitzy approach and instead, appropriately enough, brought it all back home. On 2015’s Shadows In The Night and last year’s Fallen Angels he conjured a low-lit mood of weary romance. The most obvious influence is Stardust, Willie Nelson’s jazz-country shuffe through the Great American Songbook from 1978. Dylan’s (fantastic) band draw from a similarly elegant, understated palette of whispering brushes, string bass, pedal steel, low horns and silvery threads of violin. The key difference being that, at least back then, Nelson was a masterful singer, while Dylan’s characterful arthritic wheeze must work much harder to negotiate the often-tricky technical swoops and bends of these songs. One thing is for sure, he’s clearly relishing the challenge.