Bob Dylan’s 35th studio album Tempest reveals that he has lost none of his fire.
What should we expect from Bob Dylan in 2012? After 50 years on the road, it is surely remarkable that rock’s greatest and most revered lyricist is still going at all, let alone fiercely engaged with music, still performing hundreds of gigs a year, still writing and recording. Tempest, released by Columbia Records next week, will be Dylan’s 35th studio album. What is even more remarkable is that it is among his best ever.
If there has been a criticism of Dylan’s later work, it is that the lyricism only rarely touches the poetic heights of his classic Sixties and Seventies songs. He has had a tendency to write in simple, bluesy rhyming couplets with phrases liberally borrowed from traditional songs. There is a sense of patchwork in which tension often derives from collision and contrast, the friction of ideas, characters and images rubbing up against each other in places where you are not quite sure they really belong. While Tempest maintains some of this jackdaw sensibility, Dylan sounds genuinely fired up by the possibilities of language. The whole album resounds with snappy jokes and dark ruminations, vivid sketches and philosophical asides. (The TELEGRAPH) read more...
The full album is streaming for a limited time directly on iTunes by following this link.
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