Blood On The Tracks - Bob Dylan > Reviews > the missing piece.

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Groundbreaking
Lyrics	Sublime
Quality and consistency of tracks	Flawless
How does it compare to the artist's other releases	Outstanding
Value for Money

Advantages:	innumerable .  probably my favourite album .
Disadvantages:	running order? and that's only a maybe .  .  .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

i am going to cut to the chase. this is probably the best dylan album you will ever hear. that makes it, in my book, one of the best albums ever. and it is. it really really is. dylan comes out of a creative decline to blow away all competition to the crown of rock poet of his generation. he is a god, and this is his bible.

the whole album was originally recorded in open E tuning, which gives the songs that were left untouched by the rerecording process a special rich tone that i am yet to find in other guitar based tunes.

first the indisputable magnificence of tangled up in blue. there have been essays written solely on this song, so i shan't indulge in an attempt to discuss the lyrics in any depth... if you haven't heard them though, it tells the story of a love triangle, but to be honest that doesn't matter, it seems on first listen to be a pastiche of semi-surreal moments in the life of a loner... a first rate vocal performance from his bobness here too certainly helps matters.

then, a song that would be in my top ten any day of the week, "simple twist of fate" a song that i can't stop playing on the guitar or on record... it's another love story... told in the third person (oh, how dylan!) but the narrator really involves himself at telling moments. vocal bombactics and gymnastics abound, around a wonderfully simple guitar song.

"you're a big girl now" minor song on the album, but incredibly beautiful and achingly delivered.

"idiot wind" i didn't like this track when i first heard it, but it really really grows on you, the quirky (even for dylan) story of the song, and the outrageous melody... it's like heaven was spiky.

"you're gonna make me lonesome when you go" a brilliant up-tempo song, wonderful imagery, and one of the richest sounding songs on the album...

"meet me in the morning" has to be the worst song on the album, but to be honest that's harsh treatment of a song that is lyrically astute, distinctive and reminiscent of great early work such as the "ballad of hollis brown", but as a love song. good, but not great.

"lily, rosemary and the jack of hearts" this is on my minidisc on repeat all the time... it's just hypnotic, it feels important, it feels like it holds the key to something groundbreaking, but it's so... dylan, that you can't find out what... absolute genius over a frantic tempo...

"if you see her, say hello" will turn anyone to a hopeless romantic, i think, i can't be sure, as i was one to start with. perfection.

"shelter from the storm". here it is, 9 tracks in, my favourite song on the album, a monster of a lyric, that is just so complex and riddled with analogy and self analysis that you are just in awe of this man's genius... why is he not sir bob? why is he not poet laureate? why am i babbling so much...?

because, in truth, this album affects me that much, it is a huge part of how i now judge other music... it's the benchmark for me.

"buckets of rain" pretty standard really,tagged on at the end, just as my opinion of it is, it seems like an afterthought. should have been replace by "up to me" an outtake that ended up on "biograph"