Bob Dylan Sings About a Past American Era

Bob Dylan, the man myth legend and hopefully healthy & safely quarantined songwriter has released another epic storysong.

"Murder Most Foul" is Dylan's first release in eight years and appears to be another offering of good tidings from a musician in this strange moment in history. The timing is perfect, because this song is nearly 17 minutes and hardly a second passes without a lyric. This will be one to unravel.

Greetings to my fans and followers with gratitude for all your support and loyalty across the years.
This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting.
Stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you.
Bob Dylanhttps://t.co/uJnE4X64Bb

— bobdylan.com (@bobdylan) March 27, 2020

 

"Murder Most Foul" comes together with some cautious piano playing.

Dylan utilizes a small elemental band to swirl around him, each member in differing modes of winding up or down, on a slow jazz rush. The drummer comes in splashing the cymbals with brushes, a violin bow slices up and down, piano keys bristle.

Seconds in Dylan breaks through with that old gremlin growl of his. "It was a dark day in Dallas, November '63," he sings, "A day that will live on in infamy." In the song, Dylan plays out the gruesome assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States--the most heinous and still unsolved event in the country's history.

"They blew out the brains of the king / Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing."

He forcefully describes the scene, offering possible motive. "You got unpaid debts, we've come to collect." Dylan sometimes plays loose with the facts in his songs, so I wouldn't allude to him having any Secret Service knowledge, but you can't say there's no wisdom in that grumble. The scene continues, through the limousine ride, arriving at Parkland hospital to Vice President Lyndon Johnson's swearing in to office on the tarmac in Air Force One.

Dylan drafts a direct line between the country's need to heal in the aftermath and the eruption of the counterculture. "The Beatles are comin', they're gonna hold your hand," he tells us before examining the remaining years of the 60s and 70s: Woodstock in the Aquarian Age, Altamont, Tommy can you hear me? I'm the Acid Queen. It's all "a party beyond the Grassy Knoll," Dylan sings. Colorful references of the time are dropped throughout, but Dylan brings each verse back to that fateful day in Dallas when the country broke.

Most listening to the entirety of "Murder Most Foul" will be encyclopedic Dylanologists and will love it.

It's just always a blessing to hear the master's voice and know he's breathing somewhere in a recording booth. But this is special because he sings about his contemporaries during another American era.

Everyone else might find it hard to keep their interest apace. There is no shift in tempo, no change in instrumentation, no real chorus aside from the lyrical sequence ending with the song's title, and Dylan shuffles lines over every measure. But, what else is there to do? Play it and listen. Dylan's last album was Tempest in 2012.

The Phlegm Master Returns

Bob Dylan, disciplined and froggy, drops lyrical pint after pint of blood on new album, Tempest.

When Bob Dylan, 71, opens his throat to sing on his newest album, Tempest, the listener almost has to wonder if the songwriting legend is alright. Is he choking? Is that the sound of blood coughs? Did he just swallow a bunch of corrosive acid? Dylan the Phlegm Master. Dylan the Road Scholar. Never once known for a voice of gold, the man once referred to as Judas, returns with a stark, spooky album concerned with death and his rocky quaver suits it perfectly.

Dylan continues on his late-career surge with Tempest following the drawn-out story albums Time Out Of Mind, Love And Theft, Modern Times and Together Through Life. The new one, though, is less mid-afternoon bar band and more Sleepy Hollow night-croak. Its tales are of murder, suicide, revenge and longing. Times changed long ago and now we’re stuck in the pit of despair.

A light piano breeze opens the record on “Duquesne Whistle,” a warm, gauzy jangle. The guitars tangle side by side and sound like little birds laughing to each other. Dylan is breathing his first (and last) sunny breath as he carouses around town. It only gets darker from there.

By the next song, “Soon After Midnight,” Dylan is alone and contemplating a life of hardships with the utmost ease. His grin is chiseled as he wishes for someone not there. “Narrow Way” picks the mood up with a rolling snare shot and guitars like alarms. Throughout Tempest his voice is mostly a constant rasp, but every now and then it’ll settle into a wavering and ghoulish tone. At points, especially in "Scarlet Town," you can actually hear his lips curling above his teeth as he carefully enunciates. It's sinister, static spine stuff.

“I pay in blood, but not my own,” Dylan warns on “Pay In Blood.” If any other performer at this age wrote a song with that chorus it would come off as hokey. With Dylan, though, it’s actually believable. I imagine smearings of blood on his lyric sheet as he writes at some unknown hour.

If “Duquesne Whistle” feels like a serene day in early June, then by “Scarlet Town” the album has reached a dark late-October night. The song floats along with ghost-sense as Dylan bellows and cackles. The scene is filled with beggars, junkie whores, intruders and missed opportunities with the end very near. Midway through an irksome guitar solo worms its way to the front of the mix, electrifies the listener’s senses, then disappears.

“Early Roman Kings," the following song, keeps the dread from overtaking with a Mannish Boy stroll. Dylan’s playing master and commander. “I could strip you of life, strip you of breath, ship you down to the house of death,” he sings. I fear the moment this man dies and his soul is unleashed unto the world.

Truly triumphant is Dylan on "Tin Angel." The listener is carefully walked through a bloody knock-down scuffle with knives drawn, bullets grazing ears and faith drying up. The music is steady and ambient, built around a sweet recurring pull on the bass string that tunnels in on the density of the scene. The shadow of each character flares on the attic walls of the listener’s mind.

The album ends with two final odes to death: “Tempest” about the Titanic sinking and “Roll On John” about John Lennon’s passing. Much has been written about these two songs and they mostly feel out of place musically, but what’s an album of death without mention of two historically significant endings? One can only hope it’s still a long time coming before Dylan is himself the subject of such a song.

Key Tracks: "Tin Angel," "Scarlet Town," "Pay In Blood," "Duquesne Whistle"