"What are you listening to right now?" thread | Page 673 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

People were expecting a live performance. It isn’t, rather thirteen black and white noir-style videos, filmed over several days on a soundstage in Santa Monica, which feature Dylan and band appearing to be performing but using pre-recorded tracks (with the visuals of the “performances” often not quite matching the audio from what I’ve gathered from the reviews).

I’ll say no more about the filmed side of it as I’m yet to see it, though look forward to it when I get the chance, but since the visuals are accompanied by pre-recorded audio, it’s really the audio that matters.

Not using his usual touring band, it’s Bob on vocals, guitar and harmonica, accompanied by another  couple of guitarists, a double-bassist, and an accordion. Mostly acoustic with some electric guitar.

The first thing to say is while I thought Bob’s voice was in fine fettle on last year’s Rough and Rowdy Ways, here it is shockingly good. Easily the best I’ve heard him sound in probably decades. The long forced break in the Never-Ending Tour has given his voice a chance to recover from the rigours of his touring schedule that he hasn’t allowed in many years.

The setlist is drawn mainly from songs from between 1965 and 1973 (the obvious exception being 1989’s What Was It You Wanted, with some raised eyebrows about how that fitted the “Early Songs” description – but with a 60-year career, it does fall into what could be described as the first half of his career). Many of the songs are not the usual suspects that make-up a typical Bob set, often not having been played for decades.

Bob being Bob, the lyrics are played with – sometimes minor changes, others major, including whole new verses. Only three or four escape with their original lyric intact. It’s always been one of my great attractions to Dylan, that he’s never considered his work to be fixed by the original studio arrangement, that he has always considered them as constantly evolving. I wish other artists were as brave. I wish Paul was as brave.

And then there are the arrangements! Nearly every song completely, totally and utterly recast. Many so good that you soon get over the difference and start thinking that’s how they’ve always been. They are remarkable reinventions of his work.

This is a major work, easily standing among the best of his work of the 21st century. One can only hope that he’s planning a Shadow Kingdom: The Later Songs of Bob Dylan. My jaw is officially dropped.