★★★★☆
Four stars
Now 36 albums into his career, Bob Dylan knows that he has nothing to prove to anyone. Unfortunately, this does not mean he necessarily has anything to contribute. While the unparalleled work of his past makes him closer to a living legend than any other current artist, his recent works, such as his misjudged Christmas album of six years ago, have an air of tangible decline and even a whiff self-indulgence. In Shadows in the Night, Dylan’s interpretation of ten classic songs as covered by Frank Sinatra, however, he manages to transform his dusty, cracked voice into a heartfelt messenger of pain, yearning, and love.
Dylan’s voice is certainly effective, yet of course it remains its idiosyncratic self and I must admit that were it not for my knowledge that the man singing was one of the greatest songwriters the world has ever known, I might have found the experience slightly excruciating. Wisely, therefore, he does not attempt to carry the songs entirely on his own – instead his voice drifts between the folds of luxurious steel guitar. Indeed the slow, shimmering, and bitter-sweet, Texan slide of Donny Herron is in many ways the star of the show, layering every song on the album with a blanket of benevolent moonlight.
The album’s best track, ‘What’ll I Do’, a Sinatra classic, is transformed from an orchestra driven croon into an intimate confession of loss and longing. In the lyrics, “When I’m alone/ With only dreams of you/That won’t come true/ What’ll I do?” Dylan lays out every ounce of earnest heartache at his disposal to the cause of expressing an exquisite sense of helpless loss.
Melancholy is certainly the overriding spirit of the album. From the opening lines of ‘I’m A Fool To Want You’ to the closing bars of ‘That Lucky Old Sun’ the tone is set and never strayed from. Each song slides effortlessly into the next, creating a caramel ambience that never strays into self-parody or pity, as lovelorn crooning sometimes can.
Dylan has not created a masterpiece. Equally, he has not produced the self-indulgent disaster that this collection of covers-of-covers could have been. By stripping away their orchestral accompaniments in favour of the personal, honest, and confessional outpourings that these songs are at heart, Dylan has created an album of near unalloyed simple pleasure that can stand up, not as a masterpiece of performance or song-writing, but as a triumph of emotion.
