Given his place in the very highest echelons of American music, Bob Dylan is surprisingly forthright in acknowledging how the music of his peers shaped his own musical path.
An early love of Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams and Jack Elliot would shape the young Robert Zimmerman into the folk-singing sensation of the early 1960s, whilst the electric inspiration of Little Richard and Elvis Presley (as well as contemporaries like The Beatles), would send him from solo star to front man, in one of music’s most fabled stories.
Latter day releases such as 1992’s Good as I Been to You saw Dylan trace his folk and blues lineage back even further, covering songs by Blind Willie Johnson and Stephen Foster, and recording a whole host of traditional folk songs of untraceable origin. Now in 2015 it’s the works of Sinatra, Rodgers & Hammerstein, and Irving Berlin that are pawed over for a brand new album.
Shadows in the Night sees Dylan and his masterful band dig into the archives of the so-called Great American Songbook, offering new takes on timeless tracks and delivering them to a new audience. Produced by Dylan himself under his Jack Frost pseudonym, and with his long-time collaborators. The album is a gorgeous, melancholic work, showcasing some of his finest vocals in years.
Even for someone like myself who absolutely adores Dylan’s work (his Christmas album Christmas in the Heart was the soundtrack of my kitchen yet again last year!), it’s easy to see why some find him a difficult listen these days. His rough, graveled tone – reduced almost to a bark at times on recent work – isn’t for everyone. Here, however, Dylan’s singing really gets to the essence of the songs, and these ‘late-night’ sounding versions. That’s not to say it isn’t still a bit rough around the edges, but the world-weary croon is authentic, and the songs benefit from it immensely.
On a re-telling of Sinatra’s Full Moon and Empty Arms, Donnie Herron’s wonderful pedal steel guitar provides a haunting backbone to this broken-hearted tale. The sublime production places each of the band’s members in their own spot on an imaginary stage in a twilight-hour bar; the atmosphere evoked by the beguiling music so easily creating this image of the song being performed in the listener’s mind. One of Dylan’s best vocals on the record, this lament of a craved but absent love is utterly mesmeric.
Shadows In The Night
and above
In the Wee Small Hours
His take on Jazz-standard Autumn Leaves sees him add his name to a list of heavyweight torchbearers, including Chet Baker (my favourite take on the track), Cannonball Adderley (albeit without the singing), Eric Clapton, and Eva Cassidy, amongst many others. The sparse backing really gives the autumnal feeling that the song hopes to purvey. Again, multi-instrumentalist Herron adds a country twist with his pedal steel, whilst Charlie Sexton and Stu Kimball on guitar rouse the rest of the band when the mood takes them, almost like a sound check backstage at the same late-night bar.
That ambiance permeates the whole record, and it couldn’t be more fitting. In his and his band’s re-imagining here, Dylan seems to have gotten right down to the bare bones of the songs themselves. Each track is painted in sepia-tones, a longing burning through them all for another time, another place. His wide-and-deep recording method helps further the atmosphere, keeping away from post-production techniques and tricks, and maintaining all of the soul of the music. In his own ouevre, Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours is its closest relative, even down to the colour palette of the album’s cover – something which can’t have escaped Dylan’s notice.
Dylan himself says “I don’t see myself as covering these songs in any way. They’ve been covered enough. Buried, as a matter a fact. What me and my band are basically doing is uncovering them. Lifting them out of the grave and bringing them into the light of day.”
To this listener at least, he’s brought them out into the light of a full moon, and these glorious, heartfelt versions have added their own important footnote into the Great American Songbook.
Author – Chris, Liverpool store
