Bob Dylan - Shadows In The Night (Part 2)

This is a really unnecessary album. I mean I get the point of Bob paying tribute to these great songs that he loves and so on. He wanted to release the album and he did. The problem? It is very boring, there are very few standout tracks. And worse, when I finished listening to it, I totally forget about it. It is not a bad album, the playing is nice, the singing is nice, the performances are very respectful, but there is no suspense on the whole thing. It is under 40 minutes, but feels as if it was an hour long.

 

Suspense? It's not a film.

 

Yeah. Dylan's albums are often great drama. This is too cozy for me.

 

Would you guys say that this is one of Dylan's most polarizing albums? Most of the media reviews are generally positive, but customer reviews are mixed to say the least, a good amount seem to be savaging it.

I have to admit I wasn't too excited when this one was announced. I think Tempest is excellent, and I was a little disappointed he wouldn't be following it up with an album of his own songs, and plus I'm not really into Sinatra (at least at this point in my life).

However, after reading Dylan's description of the making of this album before its release, I was looking forward to giving it a listen. Then hearing 'Stay With Me' won me over immediately. The rest of the album did not disappoint. I would absolutely welcome a volume 2 if the rumors are true.

 

I'm enjoying listening to this more and more all the time. From SITN I've figured out that Bob deeply values other people, and this is why he writes so well himself.

 

For as long as I've been listening to Bob Dylan, I've been taking his advice and checking out other artists that he's mentioned, and finding the original versions of many of the songs that he's covered. He's led me to Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, Buddy Holly, Charley Patton, Henry Ragtime Texas" Thomas, Lonnie Johnson, Rev. Gary Davis, Blind Willie McTell, and many, many others.

Back in the '90s, when I heard that Dylan was covering All My Tomorrows, and old Frank Sinatra(!) song, in some of his live shows, I was a little taken aback. I found a copy of the record, and tried to figure out what drew Bob to that particular song, written by Jimmy Van Heusen & Sammy Cahn, probably Sinatra's favorite writing team. In the process of listening more intently to All My Tomorrows, and then other tracks from of the rich and deep Sinatra catalogue, Bob expanded my musical horizons even further.

In more recent years Dylan has mentioned Charles Aznavour as one of his favorite singers. When I found some Aznavour albums in the bargain bins recently, of course I had to take them home and listen. And once again, I was pleasantly surprised, and enjoyed them very much.

I guess my point is: I've taken Bob's musical recommendations seriously over the years, and he's rarely steered me wrong. I cannot say the same for many music critics and reviewers, who have pulled the wool over my eyes countless times. Shadows In The Night will, I am certain, allow people to broaden the scope of their own musical tastes, and take them in new directions. (I'm already tracking down other versions of I'm A Fool to Want You.)

 

Finally downloaded the MFIT 'album' tonight!

Eerie, beguiling, romantic, haunting, melancholy, gentle, modest, relaxing, sobering, drunken, and That Lucky Old Sun envious, disbelieving, wanting, and defiant...

I'm loving listening to it

 

I'm glad that my taste in Sinatra matches Bob Dylan's -- Unlike most people, my favorite era of Sinatra's work is the Columbia era.

 

I dropped out of the thread for awhile, as I hadn't listened to Shadows enough to have a feel for it, and I wasn't interested in re-debating the merits of Love & Theft vs Tempest. I'm afraid I don't have much to say about SITN; I'm not a Sinatra fan at all, and my youthful infatuation with Dylan, Costello, Townsend et al is what made me avoid this kind of Tin Pan Alley songwriting in the first place. I've listened to SITN several times, but each time it finishes I'm not compelled to listen again right away. I'm certainly not offended by the album -- Bob has reached the point in his career where he can do whatever he wants, and should. Several of the performances are moving to me ("Stay With Me" and "Why Try To Change Me Now" come to mind), but so far there's nothing that I feel that Bob OWNS and makes his own, like "Blood In My Eyes" or "Lone Pilgrim." But it's an intriguing project from Bob, and I'm happy to have it. It's another piece in the puzzle.

 

Revisited "Shadows in the Night" yesterday. There are two reasons why this album speaks to me so.

One is the songs. I don't know these from Sinatra at all, but I know these songs and they've spoken to me just as I know they've spoken to Bob. He has stripped them down to basics and given his version of them, and what he sings is not exactly what I would (if I could sing!) but it is clear to me how his feelings are generating the singing. I'm an emotional person and emotions well-communicated reach me. I've also spent the last few years with my guitars doing the same thing to the best of my own ability with other songs as far as stripping them down to what I feel is their heartbeat and playing around with the melodic heart with countermelodies and rhythmic bits and I find that the process brings out the emotions in me in reaction to the song and sound. So I get the process and I feel the results.

Also. . . the mood, that mood of looking back and melancholia. I'm just coming out of that sort of a phase now, so that mood, that aura, is very "visible" to me and familiar and I can inhabit it. Having lost my wife, now mother, having left behind my adult home and my friends, having said goodbye to a woman I adored and loved deeply just because we had responsibilities that kept us across the country from each other. . . I swam, I lived in that mood for too long. And the mood and the feelings themselves have shaped my life. It's moved me further away from the hip and the pop, from the new and the raw. Makes my obessions over sound and collections of recordings shrink in importance. Having the right people in your life is far more nourishing and important than a treated room or the perfect reproduction of high res material or the hottest act in the performance venues. These songs have communicated this to me via Bob. . . and this album invokes that melancholy and nostalgia and climb to hope for the new. And I think it will have real staying power for me in the way that Blood on the tracks does in Dylan albums.

And it's also comfortable for me to listen to this NOW as I've been able to release myself from the control of the mood and I've found the next phase of my life through the blessed intervention of providence that has brought my fiancee and I back in contact and brought our love to flower. I can let Bob inform me of the feelings and mood and relate to them and not have to turn around and inhabit them again right now. THAT is also an appeal to this recording, being touched and moved. . . and able to walk away.

So really this is an album that has fascinated me in a way that many others the last few years haven't. And I bet it has staying power in my library.

 

Thanks for that. You definitely gave it to us straight from the heart. As you say, "that mood of looking back and melancholia" can make for great performances, full of conviction, and they often have real staying power -- Sinatra's own In the Wee Small Hours album, from 1955, is one example, and Blood on the Tracks resonates with me in that same manner. I hope Shadows in the Night will too.

 

Official music video for The Night We Called It A Day.

 

Hahahaha -- that's our Bob.

Thanks for posting.

 

I certainly liked the nostalgic touches of the video, but I couldn't understand why Bob shoots his granddaughter.

 

I cannot imagine you NOT liking it!

 

Hey, Lonson: moving post. Thank you, and I'm glad to hear you're coming out the other side of that darker period. No way to avoid these things as we get older, and it's not only good to know that there are upward movements in the general decline, but that music is there to help make emotional sense of it all! I've come to value late Dylan and late Leonard Cohen for exactly that in recent years.

L.

 

Thanks Louis, yes, things are getting better, and changes ahead that I hope also continue in that vein.

At no point in my life have I ever caught the Leonard Cohen bug. . . just doesn't reach me. Maybe some day. . .but I've tried more than a few times the last four decades or so.

 

I understand that. He operates on a very particular wavelength, and not everyone receives it. Luckily, the pleasures and consolations on offer in Cohen's work can be found in other forms elsewhere. Like in Dylan singing old standards.....

L.

 

Not to be played as background music . I find it if not entirely inviting then completely involving. Well, regardless, I'm in on both counts for this Night. To me, the vocals to the words of these tunes sound very revealing. Of tenderness, experience, understanding, regret, pain, and hurt. Of self awareness, a personal commentary with a dose of black comedy and pathos. Body blows disguised as playful jabs. There's much to take away from these Shadows as I hear them. Like wisdom, courage, and much charm too.

 

I agree. I'm getting into Sinatra's Columbia years. And the early Capitol albums.

 

re: What'll I Do?

I really, really like this track, and this Dylan performance. IMO, it wouldn't have sounded out of place on one of the Daniel Lanois- produced albums, Oh Mercy or Time Out of Mind. I swear I can almost hear where the reverb-drenched guitars and phasing effects would be...Maybe a second cousin to What Good Am I?

(For comparison sake, I also liked the Julie London version of this song on YouTube, as well the one by Ol' Blue Eyes himself.)

 

Sounds like he may be planning to issue a second Sinatra cover album

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/n...another-album-of-frank-sinatra-songs-20150303

 

Thanks for the link. Scary to me that I just mentioned Lanois in my previous post.

 

Johnny Mathis is my go-to for this one

 

One of the SH Forums resident Sinatra experts, Bob F, offered up a stupendous post outlining Frank's original recordings of the songs on Shadows In The Night:
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/dylan-covers-sinatra-again.389274/page-2#post-11774104

This, of course, sent me rifling through my music collection to see if I owned copies of any of those titles. Among the 20 or so Sinatra LPs and CDs on my shelves, I discovered a "six-eye" Columbia "Lp", THAT OLD FEELING, with versions of Full Moon and Empty Arms and That Lucky Old Sun. I also came up with a budget 2-LP Capitol set with I'm A Fool To Want You, but it's in fake stereo, and I believe the consensus opinion around here is that Frank's earlier version, recorded for Columbia, was the better performance. Oh well.

I couldn't find any of the remaining seven songs that Dylan chose for his album, but then I remembered a box set, 30 hours of cassette tapes(!), that someone had given my father for Christmas years ago, of Sinatra's radio performances in the 1940s and '50s. I speed-read the booklet that came with the tapes, and found that they contained a U.S. Defense Bond radio show from the '50s with a version of Why Try To Change Me Now. The booklet was full of typos, and mis-dated the program (it aired in May of 1953), which led me to the Sinatra Family Forum website, where I learned that a pre-recorded alternate take was used on the show. I finally figured out which tape it was on (#10, FYI), and dubbed it onto a CD-R. Boom, done.

Now I just need to find the other six songs before I can rest. Somebody stop me, please.