Bob Dylan - Shadows In The Night (Part 2)

Glass half empty today, bud?

 

Back in the day, I got interested in Dylan's work through the Traveling Wilburys. That led me to getting most of his later albums. Some of them I enjoyed a lot, some of them I didn't like much. Maybe I can't shake off that Wilbury perspective.
I didn't care for Jeff Lynne's covers of standards much and I'm not really into traditional swing music either so I haven't bothered with pre-listening to "Shadows in the Night" yet, apart from the pre-release stream that was made available last year. I understand a release such as this gives Dylan the songwriter more time to come up with his next album of originals. "Tempest" still hasn't completely sunk in. It's quite a deep album that rewards repeated listens. I also skipped Bob's Xmas album. Yet, I love the "World Gone Wrong" album, so it's not that I would just not like him doing covers. It's more complicated than that.

In that context, is there a song on "Shadows in the Night" that you would consider Wilbury-esque?

 

Uh, no. That'd be a reach for me. Interesting thought, though.

 

The Wilburys were rubbish.

 

Its Monday, I'll give you one guess.

 

Thank you for letting me know. There have been a few Western Swing type of songs on Bob's recent albums. Is he transforming these swing standards into Western Swing as well?

I guess you don't mind me not pressing the "like" button on that one.

 

Not at all. It's a torch ballads album like the Sinatra torch ballads albums it's modeled after -- Where Are You?, Only the Lonely, In the Wee Small Hours. All the songs are down tempo. And while it's arrangements are very sparse and stripped down -- not like Jenkins' or Riddle's on the Sinatra records -- about the only thing that suggests Western swing or a country sort of favor is the strong central role the steel guitar plays in the arrangements (and it's a brilliant performance by Donnie Herron throughout). If you're familiar with the Sinatra torch ballads records you'll be familiar with the kind of mood and tempos you'll find with the Dylan record.

 

It is entirely digital and according to Fremer the LP might actually be taken from 16 or 24 bit / 88kHz files. He asked Sony but no one will reply to him. So it is not an analogue record.

 

No! Nothing!

 

Its analogous to an analogue record though - it certainly looks like one, and it sounds good, so hey who cares?

 

While trawling the Internet earlier, I stumbled on this fine little curio; lyricist Cy Coleman singing his song, "Why Try to Change Me Now":

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Thanks also to @Bob F for pointing to No One Cares in the helpful post quoted below. While I had Sinatra's 1952 recording of the song, I personally find the 1959 vocal more subtly affecting -- particularly the closing notes.

While I couldn't spring for the audiophile release of the album, score one for Dylan... this album was my first purchase of a non-compilation Sinatra album.

 

Well, yes indeed! Thanks to all the talk about SITN and all the press reviews mentioning Sinatra I've only recently discovered the "long term" admiration between the two artists, even though I've been listening to Dylan for over 30 years. I had one Sinatra compilation called (I think) "The Reprise Years" and it was just a 3LP box set, which if I'm completely honest I never really listened to. However in stark contrast to Dylan's / Sony's internet clampdown there are dozens of Sinatra videos available with good audio on Youtube. I have been able to listen to most of the "essential Capital" albums from '55 through '60 and so far have really liked all that I've heard. As a direct result I now have 6 Sinatra albums from MOFI and UMe coming to me on LP with the four that were also mixed in stereo arriving on CD with the Larry Walsh remasters. Having also purchased the Norberg remasters by mistake these will be used as drink coasters! All I can say is thank you to the Sinatra estate for permitting everyone to hear the music online. I've always felt that people will still buy the music they like anyway so I can't see the point in holding it back for fear of loss of revenue - that seems a bit short-sighted in this day and age. Anyway, thanks to Dylan for giving the nod to Sinatra.

I haven't purchased SITN and it's extremely doubtful I ever will. It'll join CITH in being the sole Dylan albums I've never bought in one form or another.

 

There is something going in the recording/mix of the vocals that gets into the way of my appreciation of Love & Theft. The vocals have no air around them to breathe, as if they are trying to cover Bob's less than stellar vocal sound. I feel sufficated listening to the album on the account of the vocal sound on just that album. I love all Bob's eras otherwise.

 

Interesting perspective but not one that I can honestly say I can agree with. If anything L & T was one of the first Dylan albums that I ever thought sounded incredible with its big rolling production and rich musical palette. On the vinyl copy especially, the vocals sound very clear and open, even when they are "recessed" back into the mix. I think I know what you might be referring though. On some songs, notably "Lonesome Day Blues" and "Be Honest With Me" the vocals are possibly fighting for space in the mix? However I don't believe those songs are typical of the sound of the rest of the album.

 

Love & Theft was the first Dylan album that really made a connection with me. I already had Biograph and a few of his other albums. I also had Time Out of Mind which I thought had some good moments, but was overrated (my opinion of it now is that it is a masterpiece). But when I heard Love & Theft, it was like I got Dylan for the first time. The music was raw, yet polished (something rare on a Dylan album), and it just struck me as a great listen from start to finish.

Modern Times was disappointing at the time (though now I consider it almost on the same level as Love & Theft). Together Through Life was even more disappointing. Beyond Here Lies Nothing is the only memorable track on that album. And the Tempest, while a step up from TTL, struck me as a step down from L&T and MT. The songs are too long with little variation. It's like he gets stuck on the same chord for way too long on many of the tracks. He used that trick to great affect on High Water, but there was much more going on musically and melodically on that song. Having said that, Duquesne Whistle is fantastic along with a handful of other tracks that I rank highly.

All of that is to say that Love & Theft remains a standout. The guitar riffs are monstrous! The lyrics (stolen or not), melodies and instrumentation gel like nothing he's released since, IMO.

 

After the struggles with Lanois on TooM, I guess he just thought **** it, I'll do it myself. But the production on Love & Theft doesn't sound that great to me - vocals too buried and its a very dry mix. Modern Times was better but too polished and slick. He did the right thing by getting Scott Litt in for Tempest, if you ask me - its much better than either of those two. But Shadows knocks it's way out of the park.

 

Purely from a production/mixing standpoint, SITN is amongst the finest in Bob's canon. As for L&T, I'd recommend the MOV version- it's warm in a way that has helped me connect better with the album as a whole.

 

The sound quality of L & T is great: it's a larger than life epic rollicking "Americana" production with so many musical styles that all add up and unite perfectly, much similar to Blonde On Blonde's mix of country, Chicago Blues, folk and pop. I agree that the MOV LP is pretty awesome. Mind you, the 2001 CD is no slouch either. Even on a cheap CD player I always felt it was a powerful sounding record with plenty of muscle at the bottom end and a sound-stage so deep you need a pair of binoculars (from the head of the mule, naturally) to see the back "wall" of it.

In production terms alone, Tempest is very muddy in places and the band sound as though their stand-ins are warming up while they're at the local drinking hole. To my ears, the backing is squandered on Tempest, it's so distant and under-played as to almost not be there at all.

 

You could have taken those words right out of my mouth. I completely unequivocally agree with your assessment. It's right on the money!

 

It's nothing like Blonde On Blonde, what a crazy notion.

And where is this infinitely deep sound stage? Do you live in one of those holes they discovered in the Arctic?

 

The production on Tempest is good to my ears. Mr. Litt did a fine job.

 

Maybe we received different albums? Yeah, Lonesome Day Blues sounds nothing at all like Leopardskin Pillbox Hat, does it? No, I don't live in a hole but my Hi-Fi costs considerably more than $10 and it can fairly accurately recreate the depth in the mix that was achieved through design and not default. Hey, maybe that's why I can hear nods to Blonde On Blonde that you can't?

 

I think that there's a second album coming from the Shadows In the Night sessions. Recently Daniel Lanois said in an interview that Bob Dylan showed him two cds from the " Sinatra " sessions. I guess that the second album is slated for a release in the next year.

 

I don't know many of the other tracks he apparently recorded but my guess is he won't be able to come up with a collection from them that is as collectively unified as SITN. This is an album in the proper sense.