Album Review Friday

Blood On The Tracks is not a great album. Blood On The Tracks is a legendary album, certainly one of my favorites and one of the most beautiful recordings of the past sixty years.  

 I grew up a huge music fan, pouring most of my teenage tip money into records and CDs.  By the age of twenty, with over one hundred fifty albums in my collection I owned exactly zero Bob Dylan recordings.  When I was twenty one I was given the cassette of Dylan’s Greatest Hits, and wore that tape out over the summer before my senior year in college. But my flirtation with Dylan ended there.  I just never felt, for whatever misguided reason, that he would have more to offer me than those ten songs I listened to over and over in my Toyota Celica’s factory stereo.  

 This all changed when in my thirties, frustrated with the dearth of good rock music, I purchased my first Dylan CD, Highway 61 Revisited.   I was blown away, which led me to purchase another Dylan album, then another, and so on.  And then I came upon Blood On The Tracks.  

 The opening track, “Tangled Up In Blue”, captured me instantly.   It seems like a song that you step in the middle of, a rambling story with a plot you quickly catch up with, that propels itself forward to its eventual conclusion. The music is steadying and simple, and Dylan’s phrasing is catchy yet complex.  You want to sing along, but no one can deliver those lines like he can, so you retreat and appreciate the master at work.

 Following is “Simple Twist Of Fate”, a little slower in pace but still capturing the listener with its repetitive melody and tale of emotional loss.  

 Emotional loss is a theme of the album, and I will not go beyond mentioning any of the controversy over whether the album is Dylan’s poetic description of his broken marriage.  This theme though is in full form over the next two tracks.  “You’re A Big Girl” is a broken man (?Dylan) describing the heartbreak he feels upon losing his lover, trying to convince himself that ‘love is so simple’ and that he will be able to rebound and recover. These sentiments are no where to be found on the best angry breakup song ever written, “Idiot Wind”.  The bitter invective that makes up the lyrics of this song made me actually wish I had a bad breakup earlier in life so I could send this song to my ex.  I mean, listen to the lyrics, sung with a pointed aggressiveness.  Idiot wind, Blowing every time you move your teeth, You're an idiot, babe It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.  Does it get more direct than that?  Dylan does rein it back in at the end, confessing that he too was an idiot, though the message is already clear that this woman burned him, and forgiveness will not come easy. 

While Springsteen has been accurately criticized for not matching the tone of his music with the despair of the subject matter, Dylan commits the same sin on “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”.  The song is quick, the melody light, yet the lyrics describe another period for reflection, looking back at previous relationship mistakes and decisions that have led to nothing but pain.  

“Meet Me In The Morning” certainly continues the theme of pain and reflection, but done in a blues style, which breaks the album up a bit as it the most unique sounding song on the record. Another song that sets itself apart is “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts”.  This is Dylan at his story-telling best, the longest track on the album describing some sort of robbery, with a bulk of the song set in a cabaret in an unnamed town. Whatever the exact meaning of the song, what comes through is the sense of waste, loss and unfulfillment.  

Blood On The Tracks closes with three songs that are near perfect in their tone, message, and complete the emotional journey Dylan takes us on.  In “If You See Her, Say Hello”, while still hurting from lost love, Dylan has either matured or healed enough to want what is best for his lost love.  “Shelter From The Storm” describes how Dylan is rescued from a life “of toil and blood” and rescued by his lover, with each verse ending with the same lines “Come in, she said, I’ll give ya shelter from the storm”.  The power of the song is driven home by the simplicity of the music, just guitar, voice and harmonica.  

With the closing track “Buckets of Rain”, Dylan describes what is so painful about broken relationships.  Its those things you loved so much about someone that bring you the most pain:

              I like your smile

            And your fingertips

            Like the way that you move your lips

            I like the cool way you look at me

            Everything about you is me bringing me misery

With another song of simple production, voice and guitar, Dylan shows that even though broken, he can rise up.  He is broken, but he knows he “can do what you must”.   He will move on.  

 The journey of Blood On The Tracks is one of pain and loss. It is not an easy listen the first time through, as it can be emotionally exhausting.  But the crisp music underscores the simple message, one of the strength we all have to get up and keep living.