Album Review: Shadow Kingdom - The Early Songs Of Bob Dylan

Not one to let a little thing like a global lockdown get in his way, Dylan not only released his best record in two decades with Rough And Rowdy Ways but also gave us the ‘live’ – on a computer near you – event Shadow Kingdom during the emergency. If some amongst those who put their money down might have been slightly disappointed that it wasn’t really a live show, musically we were better off that the mystery man and his band put some effort into rearranging “the early songs of Bob Dylan” and finding a new way in.

As great as Dylan was in the 3Arena last November – and he really was great – a live album might not have quite captured that atmosphere, so this is a better bet altogether. Across thirteen songs and one Watchtower like instrumental, drawing on down-from-the-mountain masterworks from Bringing It All Back Home to Oh Mercy­ – here, hold on, how can Oh Mercy be classed as “early songs”? Seems to me it only came out last week. Jaysus wept, was that thirty-four years ago? – our man repaints his masterpieces, again.

The emphasis is on the acoustic instruments and the feeling is light, almost playfully so in places. You’re listening for a while before you notice the absence of anything even resembling a drum. Just like many of the earlier entries in his Philosophy Of Modern Song, the beat is implied but no less present for its apparent absence. ‘Pledging My Time’ still swings like early Muddy Waters, and Mr Morganfield never needed to hit anyone over the head to get his point across.

Monumental song writing achievements like ‘Queen Jane Approximately’ and ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ have the patina of familiarity and reverence blown off them and are allowed to be heard anew. This arrangement of 'Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues' - to offer just one example - transports the song forwards (and backwards) in time from the wild, hipper-than-anyone-has-ever-been, frazzled Godhead of Highway 61 Revisited to the calmer when you're lost in the rain in Juarez environs of the Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid soundtrack.

Jeff Taylor’s accordion is the unlikely star, alongside the upright bass of Don Was, the chief’s harmonica, sounding as lonely as the last man in ‘What Was It You Wanted’, and that remarkable voice, talking and coaxing us through perhaps the greatest lyrics ever scribbled down on hotel stationary and the backs of fag packets. While certain acolytes of the master have stumbled with recent "re-imaginings", Shadow Kingdom deftly demonstrates how it should be done.

A casual reminder of genius.