Bob
Dylan - Fallen Angels - No Star Review
Following
in the footsteps of last year’s “Shadows in the Night”
debacle, Bob Dylan puts his distinctive vocal to a dozen songs that
he, and his generic band of buddies massacre. There's blood on the
tracks all the way to hell and back for this most foul of
transgressions. Choosing to butcher up a selection of classic
standards is musical sin!
One
listen to these slaughtered classics might set you against these
numbers for all time to come. My advice to you is; DO NOT BUY or
LISTEN TO THIS GARBAGE! Pass it by for all time, or you may even turn
on listening to the older, better Dylan material.
For
the fool who doesn't heed my good advice, your listening experience
might only compare to that of the screeching wheels of a slow train
coming. Mercifully this album clocks in just under 38 minutes
otherwise you might as well get knocked out loaded and pray to the
heavens above to lose this stain of a memory like a small bit of
amnesia, a time out of mind experience may be the only way forward if
you ever hope to be saved.
These
songs..."Young at Heart" "Maybe You’ll Be There"
"Polka Dots and Moonbeams" "All the Way"
"Skylark" "Nevertheless" "All or Nothing at
All" "On a Little Street in Singapore" "It Had to
Be You" "Melancholy Mood" "That Old Black Magic"
"Come Rain or Come Shine" ...have never been done so wrong
in their entire history of existence till NOW!
Indeed,
the times they are a changing. Maybe, it's not dark yet completely,
but that long black cloud is coming down on the career of this once
highly revered voice of a generation who's lost his way. Today's Bob
Dylan is a shell of a prophet who is all too content with being a
nostalgia act, accepting bull-shit accolades, and awards smiling
blithely like a numb-skull bobble head who will never, ever, ever
proffer an opinion outside of political correctness.
This
pitiful uninspired relic could do us all a favor and leave the
classics alone.
Rate
this Album No Stars.
Buyer
Beware – This album should be made Street Illegal!
Update: As of today 6/14/2016 on Billboard this album has been on the charts for 3 weeks and after debuting at number 7 and then falling to 82 last week, it is now at 173.
Update: The album has fallen off of the Billboard Top 200 as of 6/21/2016
Update: As of today 6/14/2016 on Billboard this album has been on the charts for 3 weeks and after debuting at number 7 and then falling to 82 last week, it is now at 173.
Update: The album has fallen off of the Billboard Top 200 as of 6/21/2016
I so agree with you R.K. Simpkins. Leave Bob Dylan alone!!
ReplyDeleteEven if your writing has some humour in it, and I am as stunned by this record as you, I just cannot concur with you describing it as the worst done to these standards, leave that to the unimaginative Rod Stewart with his boring lush orchestration. And Shadows in the Night at least had a melancholy feel and original approach and a meaning in the cannon of his great work, so it cannot not be dismissed as easily as you do, it's not grating, maybe just a bit too easy listening for its own good, yet with a brilliant choice of songs. Fallen Angels consists of out takes from a flawed experiment and should have stayed on the cutting floor, but no one in the vicinty of The Bard dares tell him the truth anymore (the title song of the masterpiece Tempest is delivered without any daring by the musicians and thus falls flat despite the interesting lyrics).
ReplyDeleteThanks for your insightful comments. I also agree with you about Rod and his slaughterhouse treatment of the classics. I just believe that these songs and Dylan are not a good combination. Pedal Steel guitar on these songs is a sin.
ReplyDeleteI would not have dissed this album or the previous, except that all of the tracks were recorded in a short time all at the same time. The record company conjured up the idea of halving these tracks and issuing them in two separate albums. That is an all out cheap shot and assault on die hard fans.
Even with that in mind, if they just would have issued them as part of his bootleg series I would not have minded.
I think that was the biggest mistake made.
I wish he'd do covers albums like he did before ala World Gone Wrong and Good As I Been To You.
Thanks again for your comments