BOB DYLAN : SHADOW KINGDOM - THE EARLY SONGS OF BOB DYLAN

BOB DYLAN : SHADOW KINGDOM

When I Paint My Masterpiece
Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)
Queen Jane Approximately
I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Just like Tom Thumb's Blues
Tombstone Blues
To Be Alone With You
What Was It You Wanted
Forever Young
Pledging My Time
Wicked Messenger
Watching the River Flow
It's All Over now, Baby Blue
Sierra's Theme

Label : Columbia

Venue : Harvelle's, Santa Monica, California, USA

Recording Date : May 19, 2021

Release Date : June 2, 2023

Length : 54:08

Review (Rolling Stone Magazine) : For fully half of Bob Dylan’s career, his primary focus has been the road. Since the late Eighties, he’s done plus-or-minus a hundred shows a year, pandemic excepted. Along the way, he’s been remaking his catalog, twisting the classics into drastic new shapes. He’d always done that, of course, from turning his folk songs into electric rock in the mid-Sixties, on down to his infamous speed-snarl through “Masters of War” at the Grammy Awards in 1991. That sense of constant evolution also seems to have played a role in shaking loose his songwriting and record-making process, starting with Time Out of Mind in 1997. Hearing Dylan play yo-yo tricks with his own music would become the very reason to see him for many of his most dedicated fans — the kind who want to hear all the versions, because they’re always different. His improvisational spontaneity has made him the opposite of an oldies act. What makes his intimate new release, Shadow Kingdom, a triumph is that it’s the ultimate version of both sides of Dylan’s late career. It brilliantly reinvents some of his most iconic songs, while also feeling like a definitive recording itself. Shadow Kingdom was originally a streaming event available for a week in July 2021. But this 54-minute live performance was not the concert special many had expected. Instead, it was a film of Dylan and Covid-masked actors miming to new studio recordings of some his most beloved songs, with an all-star group of backing musicians that included, among others, Don Was (upright bass), T Bone Burnett (guitar), and Greg Leisz (pedal steel, mandolin). Director Alma Har’el’s black-and-white filming frames Dylan and his onstage “band” strikingly — every player is in most every shot, along with plenty of the audience, who are dressed up like they’re hanging around the bar in Casablanca.Now, the studio recordings of the songs that appeared in Shadow Kingdom have been collected for this album, proof that as striking as the film was, this is a project that was made for listening. The songs even segue together, each one drifting into stray notes that quickly cohere into new patterns, like a DJ set or an exceptionally compact Grateful Dead show. The material here skews toward the 1960s, with three exceptions: “Forever Young,” from 1974’s Planet Waves, “What Was It You Wanted?,” from 1989’s Oh Mercy, and a new instrumental closer, “Sierra’s Theme.” But the powerfully understated arrangements seem to come from somewhere in time between the two World Wars, if not from before the 20th century began.

Review (Super Deluxe Edition) : It’s a great time to be a Bob Dylan fan. Over the past few years, we’ve been treated to a masterful studio album, 2020’s Rough and Rowdy Ways, some essential official Bootleg Series releases, like Springtime In New York and January 2023’s Fragments: Time Out of Mind Sessions, superb live performances and a mysterious, stylised, and brilliant ‘concert’ film, Shadow Kingdom: The Early Songs of Bob Dylan. Directed by the Israeli-American Alma Har’el, Shadow Kingdom appeared on the Veeps live streaming service in May 2021, to tie-in with Dylan’s 80th birthday. Viewers had to pay $25 to view the show, which was available to rewatch for only 48 hours before it disappeared. This moody, arty, black and white performance by Dylan and his masked band was supposedly set in the fictitious and smoky dive bar, the Bon Bon Club, in Marseille, France, but, in reality, it was filmed on a soundstage in Santa Monica, California over a week in 2021, when the pandemic put the brakes on Dylan’s Never Ending Tour. That wasn’t the only strange thing about the critically-acclaimed Shadow Kingdom – it wasn’t really a concert at all, as the musicians, including Shahzad Ismaily on accordion, and Big Thief guitarist, Buck Meek, were miming to pre-recorded backing tracks, and Dylan aside, the band who were credited in the film didn’t actually appear on the soundtrack. Well, he did once write a song called ‘Mixed Up Confusion….’ Now, shortly after Dylan’s 82nd birthday, which was on 24 May this year, we’ve been treated to an official release of the songs on Shadow Kingdom. This soundtrack album, which is available on CD and double LP – the fourth side of the vinyl version is etched rather than including any music – features the 13 songs from the film and an atmospheric instrumental piece called ‘Sierra’s Theme’, which played over the film’s closing credits and sounds like ‘All Along The Watchtower’ rewritten for a cowboy movie. The mystery surrounding Shadow Kingdom continues, as the musicians who performed on the album aren’t credited in the sleeve notes, but there’s speculation that Dylan’s band included Jeff Taylor (accordion), Greg Leisz (pedal steel guitar, mandolin), Tim Pierce, T-Bone Burnett, Ira Ingber (guitars) and Don Was (upright bass). What we can be certain of is the quality of the music and the performances, which lean heavily on acoustic guitar, upright bass and accordion – there are no drums or piano, but Dylan adds a touch of harmonica here and there. Although the Shadow Kingdom film was described as ‘The Early Songs of Bob Dylan’, confusingly, it doesn’t include anything from his first four albums. These reworkings of songs span from 1965 to 1989. The earliest is a new take on ‘It’s All Over, Baby Blue’ from Bringing It All Back Home, and the most recent track, and one of the highlights, is a version of ‘What Was It You Wanted’, from Oh Mercy. Most people probably wouldn’t consider Oh Mercy to be one of Dylan’s early records, but to be fair, it’s 34 years old… Dylan is in fine voice on Shadow Kingdom and the musicians breathe new life into these songs with their inspired and often stripped-back, cantina band-like arrangements. The riotous ‘Tombstone Blues’ from Highway 61 Revisited undergoes a radical reinvention – it’s now slowed down, sparse and intimate, while a delightfully playful and breezy ‘While I Paint My Masterpiece’, which was first released by The Band on Cahoots in September 1971, but appeared on Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol. II later that year, has a Cajun feel. There’s a poignant ‘Forever Young’ and ‘What Was It You Wanted’ sounds moodier and sultrier than the original – in its new incarnation, it’s even more powerful. ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight’ and ‘To Be Alone With You’ have been shorn of their country influences; the former becomes bluesy rockabilly, and the latter is now laid back, more poignant and sounds less throwaway than the version we’re more familiar with. A sprightly ‘Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine’) is more faithful to the original, there’s a lovely, delicate rendition of ‘Queen Jane Approximately’ with finger-picked guitar, accordion and harmonica, and a great, slow, late-night take on the bluesy ‘Pledging My Time.’ There’s more blues on ‘Watching The River Flow’, which was released as a digital single ahead of the album, and is one of the record’s more up-tempo offerings, with some tasty electric guitar. The slow and moody version of ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ definitely sounds like it’s been influenced by the arrangements on Rough and Rowdy Ways, as do some of the other songs on the album. Shadow Kingdom is a record for Dylan diehards to treasure – the latest of several releases by him that are essential purchases. Unlike some acts who, when they choose to revisit and rerecord songs from their back catalogue, simply churn out inferior acoustic versions, or rope in an orchestra to add some strings and horns, Dylan has expertly reinvented some of his well-known and lesser-known numbers, taking them into new territory and never sounding once like he’s going through the motions. In fact, his voice on Shadow Kingdom is the best it’s been in years. To coincide with the release of the soundtrack, the film is being made available to download and rent from Apple TV on 6 June, so there’s another opportunity to see and hear what he did in the shadows. Who knows what he’ll be getting up to next. Dylan’s career has lasted more than 60 years and, now in his early eighties, he still surprises, confuses and delights us. Long may it continue.

Review (Far Out Magazine) : At 82-years-old, Bob Dylan is still the original vagabond out on the road and seeing him live remains biblical. Unlike a lot of older icons, Dylan has not become a tribute act to his former glory. In many ways, this itself is a tribute to his artistry in the first place—none of his work was ever upholding to any gimmick or pretence, it was all about the power of the songs themselves and they have remained as timeless as ever. And so, he has aged like a great artist should, weathering towards a mystic depth and imbued with a gravelled power that defies his frail stature like a feather that floats towards a window and shatters the pane on impact. This delicate shower of shear craft comes across in stunning fashion on his new live album, Shadow Kingdom. The 13 tracks were handpicked by Dylan from his live broadcast event of the same name back in 2021 during the dark days of the pandemic. His work then was as comforting and illuminating as a kid’s book to a child; on this polished up new record, that is most certainly still the case. Beginning in a bluesy manner with ‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’, Dylan orchestrates a textured arrangement with ease as his magnificent band follow his lead like how Sterlings respond in murmuration. Opening on a relatively obscure cut also sets the tone for the album’s tracklisting. Yes, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ might not feature, but he’s played those two anthems thousands of times over his career, why would you want to hear them again over a master following his muse with absolute sincerity? This sense of Dylan being at one with his creativity is a feast to behold throughout the album. It turns ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ into a continental sounding epic akin to a croaky Scott Walker tune. That divergence highlights the brilliant depths of Dylan’s imagination above all else. These old tracks are reborn as stirring new efforts almost entirely dissociated from what they once were in a strange allegory for the shifts of time that proves to be a constant theme in the welter of the record. Recently, when Dylan was asked about why he still continues to play live, he answered: “The reason you do it is because it’s a perfect way to stay anonymous, and still be a member of the social order. You’re the master of your fate. You manipulate reality and move through time and space with the proper attitude. It’s not an easy path to take, not fun and games, it’s no Disney World.” He told the Wall Street Journal: “It’s an open space, with concrete pillars and an iron floor, with obligations and sacrifices. It’s a path, and destiny put some of us on that path, in that position. It’s not for everybody.” In the past, Dylan told Pete Townshend that it is the preordained fate of the folk musician, one programmed into Dylan as soon as he took to the stage. “I asked Bob Dylan why he does so many gigs,” Townshend recalled of their encounter at Desert Trip. “He told me, ‘I’m a folk singer. A folk singer is only as good as his memory, and my memory is going.’ He’s doing it to keep his memory alive.“ And on Shadow Kingdom, he is as vital as ever. The title seems to decreed the coded myth that makes the album soar. As he once wrote: “Songs, to me, were more important than just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality. Some different republic, some liberated republic.” In a live setting, Dylan is still able to manipulate reality towards this sovereignty of song, towards his mythic shadow kingdom.

Review (Clash Music) : Bob Dylan was confounded and confused, delayed and derailed. Well, wouldn’t you be? When the Never Ending tour was launched in 1988 it was designed to withstand any ordinary obstacle, but Rock’s Poet Laureate didn’t quite foresee the coming of an international pandemic. A modern Rimbaud, maybe, but Nostradamus, he ain’t. With his band off the road and time to kill, Dylan hatched a plan in 2021. Working with Israeli-American filmmaker Alma Har’el, he brought his regular band together on a soundstage in Santa Monica, California, opting to re-work vintage songs from his esteemed catalogue. Dubbed Shadow Kingdom – The Early Songs Of Bob Dylan the 50 minute film was a roaring success on its 2021 release, thanks in part to its focus – on the Bard’s heralded mid 60s evolution – and the brisk, infectious performances therein. But the pandemic is over, and Dylan is back on the road. Given the shift in context, what hold does Shadow Kingdom have over fans? Now presented in full as an audio document, it emerges as a fascinating take on Bob Dylan’s history, picking apart old truths and laying out something that feels a little more at ease with who he has become. The oft-quoted phrase Thin Wild Mercury Sound was always a misnomer – here, he reaches into the fabric of the American songbook, tethering his often abstract work to broader currents and deeper tributaries. Opening with a warm, absorbing ‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’ there’s a sense of wry humour in Dylan’s visitation of the past. While the original of ‘Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)’ has a choppy, skippy feel, here it’s ruminative, with an aspect of contemplation. ‘Queen Jane Approximately’ emerges as something more elegiac, as if imagining the lyric pages yellowed by time. Yet it’s not all contemplation. Bob Dylan’s touring ensemble are forged by the fires of countless months on the road, so cute rocker ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight’ has a lavicious physicality, and an elastic ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’ offers an intriguing revisitation to Highway 61. — — The wheezing accordions of ‘Tombstone Blues’ are accompanied by splashes of guitar, the band arranged as though Dylan were approaching one of his painting. The tempo is upped on ‘To Be Alone With You’ as the ‘Nashville Skyline’ highlight is injected with a touch of rockabilly. Expertly paced, the performance flows to a lugubrious strut on ‘What Was It You Wanted’ – all atmosphere and emotion; cinematic in a kind of film noir way. The oft-covered ‘Forever Young’ is given a fresh reading, and while even Dylan can’t quite reinvent the track there’s something thrilling about hearing him reclaim it. ‘Blonde On Blonde’ 12 bar ‘Pledging My Time’ emerges as a sludgy slow blues, the space between each note stretched out to the length of the trans-continental railroad; there’s a Celtic feel to ‘The Wicked Messager’ however, with the performance containing something uniquely 19th century in its DNA, like a sepia photography. The jaunty and carefree ‘Watching The River Flow’ allows Dylan to emerge as a regular Huckleberry Finn, before the bold reinvention that accompanies ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’. A farewell to an age? Or a welcome to another? ‘Shadow Kingdom’ closes with ‘Sierra’s Theme’, a brooding instrument that shows the full scope of each musician. It recalls his score for ‘Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid’, while also tapping into the more modern chapters of his work. Shorn of its visuals, ‘Shadow Kingdom’ remains a fascinating listen. During his most recent concerts, for example, Dylan rarely if ever dipped into these waters, preferring the clear, unmuddied currents of the present. Facing down his past, he comes close to eclipsing it, and offers magnificent proof of his continued vitality as a performing artist.