The Best Music Review I’ve Read All Year
I hope one day to write an album review that is as utterly devastating and completely accurate as this one. Moe Lane has a brilliant excerpt but I think the sharpest part of the blade is in this bit before the section Moe quoted.
The arrangements, though, are jarringly slick, with sleigh bells and gossamer strings and cooing girl singers–as if Dylan had chosen to lift the backing tracks from an Andy Williams Christmas special circa 1968. Oozing just beneath his asthmatic croak, the arrangements give an effect of overwhelming creepiness. His voice gets worse with every track. You wonder whether someone left the karaoke machine on in the emphysema ward at the old folks’ home. He doesn’t sing notes so much as make exhausted gestures in their general direction, until at a break he falls silent and is rescued by the backup singers, who reestablish the melody in the proper key. But then he starts singing again.
You know what makes that brilliant? The last line.
I can’t really say I disagree with anything Ferguson wrote. I’ve always been lukewarm when it comes to Dylan. I like a couple of his songs, and don’t like a lot more. He was easily the weakest of the Traveling Wilburys and it’s been noticed by certain Wilbury fans that when the other Wilburys put out solo albums, his musical talents were nowhere to be found.
Other Posts of Interest:
- My Favorite Christmas Music Explained: Oh Holy Night
- “And the rocket’s red glare, bunch of bombs in the air…”
- A Virtual Choir? Sure, Why Not?
Category: Music
This is why I just crank up the Motorhead.
Hate to do this Jimmie, what with you just having returned from your sabbatical and all, but, while Andrew Ferguson has, indeed, written one of the greatest album reviews EVAH, it ain't got nothing on Lester Bangs's review of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music album. The whole column in the old CREEM Magazine, all 750 words, consisted of the word 'NO!' over and over and over again.
That said, I enjoyed every single word of Mr. Ferguson's review.