Shadows in the Night (2015)


 

Track Listing
 1. I'm a Fool To Want You
 2. The Night We Called it a Day
 3. Stay With Me
 4. Autumn Leaves
 5. Why Try To Change Me Now
 6. Some Enchanted Evening
 7. Full Moon and Empty Arms
 8. Where Are You?
 9. What'll I Do
 10.That Lucky Old Sun

 

It is perhaps no longer surprising that Bob Dylan should once again confound expectations. Throughout his career, he has refused to remain tethered to any fixed identity, reinventing himself with a frequency and unpredictability unmatched in popular music. Nevertheless, Shadows in the Night, a collection of standards associated with the great American songbook—and more specifically with Frank Sinatra—still manages to feel unexpected.

Dylan, now well into his seventies, has chosen to immerse himself in the repertoire of a generation that preceded his own emergence by a decade. It is a curious gesture: these are not songs that ever figured prominently in his formative work, nor has he ever professed open admiration for this particular style. Yet here he is, interpreting with evident reverence material that would once have seemed alien to the folk and rock idioms he helped define.

And to his credit, Dylan does not attempt mimicry. He makes no effort to rival the lush vocal command of Sinatra, nor does he drown the arrangements in nostalgic excess. Instead, his renditions are subdued, understated, and arranged with a sparse delicacy. Steel guitar and brushed percussion provide the framework, while Dylan’s gravelled voice navigates the melodies with surprising restraint.

But the artistic success of the album is not easily quantified. There is, undeniably, sincerity in the performances, and a degree of emotional authenticity that only an artist of Dylan’s experience could summon. Yet for all the craft and care, the record often feels monochromatic. The songs—uniformly mournful, thematically desolate—blur into one another, each wrapped in the same late-night melancholy. One might admire the ambition more than the outcome.

It is not a record likely to convert new listeners, nor is it one that seems designed for the audience that once clung to Dylan’s words in protest rallies and poetry circles. Even those lifelong fans, now themselves in advanced years, may struggle to locate a point of connection. The album is, at best, a mood piece—best suited to dim lighting, solitary hours, and a drink in hand. Outside of such contexts, its appeal diminishes rapidly.

Still, as a document of Dylan’s continued refusal to capitulate to expectations, Shadows in the Night is of undeniable interest. It is, like much of his late-period work, less a performance than a provocation. Whether or not one enjoys it may be secondary to the fact that, once again, Dylan has done precisely what no one asked for—and, perhaps, what only he could.

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