For a singer, setting yourself up to be compared to Frank Sinatra smacks of either supreme confidence or a Zen-like indifference. For Bob Dylan, however, you suspect it’s a combination of both.
This is Dylan’s second collection of American standards, and comes from the same sessions as last year’s Shadows In The Night. Like that album, these dozen songs are covers of 1950s classics, most made famous by Sinatra, the exception being the lovely ‘Skylark’, which was recorded by a host of singers, including Bing Crosby and Aretha Franklin.
If late night, easy listening isn’t your thing, forget it. Dylan croons his way through the 12 tracks, while the music gently brushes up against your eardrums, all nuzzling foreplay rather than actual penetration (ahem). The band includes some regular faces, like Bob’s longest-running sideman, Tony Garnier on upright bass, Charlie Sexton on guitar and George Recelion percussion, as well as horns and pedal steel guitar. The pace rarely raises itself above a saunter (the skiffle shimmy of ‘That Old Black Magic’ aside), and anyone looking for the kind of raw country thrills Dylan’s own compositions have provided will be disappointed.
This is a homage, plain and simple. The very facet that has proved a criticism, Dylan’s gnarly voice, here proves something of a boon, inhabiting the songs with a lived-in quality that’s as far away from Ol’ Blue Eyes as you could imagine. Listen to ‘Never The Less’, where he practically drips life experience from every syllable; or ‘Young At Heart’, where ironically, the septuagenarian sounds every one of his 74 years; or the ridiculously romantic ‘Maybe You’ll Be There’, where you half expect to wake up Marty McFly-style back in the 1950s.
Where sometimes Bob’s own material sees the renowned songwriter cramming as many syllables as possible into every line, these songs are allowed to breathe, giving that hoary old voice the space to shine. He really inhabits the songs, making them his own, like the 1940s jazz standard ‘On A Little Street In Singapore’, which here becomes a wistful Waitsean croon. Smokin’.

Rating: 7/10