Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks

Speaking of blood, i'm suddenly in possession of Bob Dylan's 15th album, Blood On The Tracks. Mighty fine pun for a title, that one. Today everyone (well, everyone who doesn't unconditionally hate Bob Dylan of course) says this is a maximum score album, but tons of people hated it back in the '70s. Everybody wants to do the autobiographical it's about his dissolving marriage to Sara thing, but i'm way more interested in his own statement that these songs grew out of the newly deep thinking about time he acquired while taking art lessons. It's literally a timeless look at the nature of human relationships. 

On the surface that's ridiculous, there are bound to be linguistic time stamps all over this thing, but i suspect the underlying thought is that there's no chronological time happening here; past and future are just as much a part of the present as now is, and you can substitute them all willy nilly like i like to do. Let's find out in the future if that's what he did back in the past. That future commences now. 

Alright, yeah, everybody will pick up on the thing that best connects to themselves personally. It's a breakup album, nicely highlighted by essentially being Dylan's last inarguable Folk Rock album. It is timeless, or time all folded in on itself, or just simply universal in its approach to the concept. And in that vein, the comparison to Sgt. Pepper seems fair. Breakup is the same kind of concept and a Sgt. Pepper concert, these albums take place inside their respective concepts without much connection to actual specific reality. 

Now, as for my actual assessment, i think we all know that the track 2 cooldown just doesn't work for me. Tangled Up In Blue shouldn't be track 2, especially when there at least three other places where that track would be way more effective. Then again, listening to it feels remarkably like the tracks have already been shuffled anyway, so you can put them in whatever order feels right to you. 

One thing's for sure though, even though the songs are topically all over the place, scattered in terms of style and the two different sessions in New York and Minnesota, they do all belong here. The spontaneity of recording them Dylan was going for shines through and they come across as the scattered thoughts of grappling with deep emotions while the train never quite slows down enough to safely jump off. And as adventurous, experimental, and downright quirky as he gets in terms of verse structure and delivery, Dylan's singing is actually surprisingly good against the equally quirky open tuning he's using. On the last track, Buckets of Rain, it sounds like the guitar is totally riding the struggle bus and barely holding it together. 

I mean, it's a phenomenal album. It should be disorganized, disheveled, a bit bipolar, and on the verge of a breakdown. It certainly won't change your opinion of Bob Dylan in either direction, but as an album i think it's pretty "getable." Like it or not, you aren't going to be scratching your head in confusion afterward. Man there's something so delicious about the warbly, close to tears, loosy-goosy tuning of Buckets of Rain. It really reminds me of Lindsey Buckingham's Travis picking masterclass Never Going Back Again from Rumours, but like at the complete opposite end of the emotional spectum, and i might have to listen to it 3 or 12 more times. 

I suppose it's also a fitting album to end this part of his career, seeing as the very next release in the Bob Dylan catalog will be the Basement Tapes that kicked off this stage of his career in the first place. Bit of a "meta" album in that respect, and i definitely like it.