TheMaker

Wasn't it Jim Keltner who said he was floored when TOOM came out and Girl from the Red Shore had been omitted from the track listing? He said something in an interview a couple years later that it was one of the best songs Dylan ever wrote. If that's the case, it'll surface in the years/decades to come, that's for sure.

I like Rank Strangers and Brownsville Girl from the two late '80s duds. UtRS has a few saving graces, but it's mostly substandard by far.

ah, why did you include under the red sky?

Amen. It's as bad or worse as Down in the Groove. The only weaker Dylan studio LPs are Empire Burlesque and UCK. Er, UCK. Sorry, I can't say it without gagging on my tongue: the one that came out in 1986 and has Brownsville Girl on it. Oh, shudder...

1. Automatic for the People

2. Lifes Rich Pageant

3. Up (yes, this is a serious reply)

Musically is the faster stuff rockin or honky tonkin?

I'd say neither, personally. Very Muddy Waters/bluesy, I think. The first track has a strong Under the Red Sky-meets-L&T feel; Rollin' and Tumblin' is musically true to its name, but McKinley Morganfield never sang about young sluts charming his brains away; Levee's Gonna Break sounds so much like Summer Days that you can literally sing the lyrics to the latter along with the former with ease.

Slower stuff breezy ballady like on LT or straight heart wrenching slower torch ballads like TOOM?

I'm cautiously optimistic that the ballads won't be as trite as the clips let on. They're awfully syrupy, and the lyrics aren't impressive at all. If we can judge the record fairly based on 30-second samples (and I'm not saying we can), then When the Deal Goes Down and Spirit on the Water are easily the worst songs Dylan has written in 15-20 years, no contest. If you can imagine L&T's ballads with the Gershwin/Porter factor set to overdrive, that's probably the best way to describe these two.

The midtempo stuff sounds the most promising. I'm chomping at the bit to hear Workingman's Blues #2, which seems to marry the dusty banjo folk of High Water with the majesterial sweep of Not Dark Yet. The vocal melody also sounds really excellent. "Well, I'm listenin' to the steel rails hum / Got both eyes tight shut / Just sittin' here trying to keep the hunger from creepin' its way into my gut." Even the brief 30 seconds we get here are remarkably vivid.

Nettie Moore sounds very spare musically. Just acoustic guitar and thudding drums, and it sounds like it might be a solid story song. The sound reminds me a bit of a much more laconic Cross the Green Mountain.

The last song, Ain't Talkin', could be a TOOM outtake. It's like a more animated, more sinister Highlands. "Ain't talkin' / Just walkin' / Through this weary world of woe. Hot burnin' / Still yearnin' / No one on Earth would ever know."

Reviews said dylan spent an uncharacteristic amount of time on the vocals does it really show? (also claimed his prhasing was Sinatraesque...any truth to that?)

Unequivocally, no. The voice here is nearly identical to L&T, which is hardly a bad thing. The phrasing, however, hems closer to TOOM, which is also far from a bad thing!

Bob's really singing the ballads, of which there seem to be quite many. If you can imagine a cross between Bye and Bye and Moonlight with the cover of Return to Me from the Sopranos soundtrack, you'll have an idea of where he's ended up here.

All told, judging from the clips, I think we're looking at a really uneven record, unfortunately. The lows are STRONGLY reminiscent of of Under the Red Sky, but the highs are sounding like they may stack up against the very best of TOOM and L&T. Here's hoping!

Thanks! Interesting stuff. VERY much a logical follow-up to L&T in terms of general sound (Gershwin-meets-Robert Johnson-meets-Muddy Waters), but perhaps a bit too much so? The second-to-last clip sounds almost identical to Summer Days - a great song, but I don't know that we need a rerun so soon after that song's release.

The lyrics are promising, though, one or two sappy love songs aside. Some amazing lines on here, especially "Some young lazy slut has charmed away my brainzzzzz!" Fuck! Outstanding!

Dude, if they're road-testing the material, they want you to hear it...

Still, I admire your fortitude. There's something so willfully perverse about the wait-for-the-album/wait-for-the-official-release mentality. I don't get it at ALL, but I respect it.

Geez, I really don't know what to think about this one. I keep vacillating between wanting to slam it for being a deballed Coldplay-sounding thing, but then those Jesus Etc., Escovedo-worthy strings come in, and the whole thing seems inoffensive enough to rank with the weaker new songs that have been played in recent months. The solo doesn't seem to be up to much, pretty standard Nels stuff, but there's something interesting there. With work, this could be a decent song.

MMJ @ Conan definitely gets a very honourable mention from me. That performance is absolutely elemental.

Neil Young performing 'Rockin' in the Free World' on Saturday Night Live, 1989

This is probably my favourite Neil performance ever. Another almost-coulda-voted-for-it for me.

Wow. You took the words right outta my mouth, froggie. If this is a contest, then guess what? Restless is winning!

I'm in Canada every night, but I've never heard of this song. Sorry.

Nobody's Darlings was my introduction to this band, so I'm still feeling my way through their back catalogue. Man, talk about Good Old Fashioned Rock 'n' Roll's best-kept secret. These new songs are blowing away everything on the last disc pretty easily.

I very seriously refer to the Bible as a pack of fairy tales. Does that mean I have done syndrome? Oh no!

My initially high opinion of it hasn't quite held up, but that's largely because many of its great-to-begin-with songs have only grown better in a live setting (especially Theologians, which has improved immeasurably; it's a dead fuck on the album). Hummingbird and Muzzle of Bees (arguably Jeff's best song) still can't be topped live, though, IMO.

Oh, and Spiders is still the biggest turd/misstep in the band's entire history. Having to sit through it at every show only makes me hate it more.

Overall, if I can ignore Spiders long enough to rank Wilco's albums, this one falls just below YHF and Being There for me. A bit bumpy, but generally spectacular.

Huge congrats to everybody who got tickets to a town near you! You have absolutely no idea how much I envy you.

(in best Will Ferrell-from-Wedding-Crashers voice:) TOM! TORONTO! FUCK!!!

Man, the backlash against Stevens is almost too incredible to believe. I just can't understand it.

Just imagine if Dylan were coming up through the ranks today instead of in the Sixties. "Oh, Blonde on Blonde? It's cute. A little precocious, I suppose, but I like the vagueish literary aspect of it all. Nah, I don't really listen to it more than maybe once a year... it's just cute hipster shit."

Oh, if I could just take it all back!

Damn. Jim ain't sittin' around waitin' for old age before raiding the archives for commercial release. That's kind of refreshing.

Wow, awesome news. I didn't even know there was a new AD on the horizon!

That photo is spectacular (pretty sure it's a vintage Ted Croner shot; he'd likely be familiar to music geeks for his cover to Luna's Penthouse), but that typeface offends me personally as an artist. Holy shit, that's awful. Think it's too late for me to petition Sony for a chance to redesign it pro bono...?

Insignificance turned this skeptic into a believer. I also like Eureka a lot, but what O'Rourke does with traditional songish structures on the former is really impressive.

Maybe you're thinking of Dylan 28 years ago.

AWESOME. Let me write down your username so I don't accidentally make the mistake of ever taking you seriously. Ever.

I think this is the worst, hands down. There IS no melody, and that's worrying. I mean, Wilco + instruments has always = melody.

Great doc, and I'm more than a little surprised to see the underwhelming response to it on this of all forums. I can take or leave Bragg, but Wilco is Wilco and Woody is an indispensible figure in American music/poetry/history. I thought it was very well put together and featured a lot of great performance footage.

Postal code, guys. Postal. (I still don't know what a "zip" is.)

Has anybody else ever heard the old Johnny Cash version of this song? What struck me most about it is how not dissimilar to Wilco's arrangement it is. Pretty freaky.