Bob Dylan Shadows in the Night
| Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan Shadows in the Night
Shadows in the Night is the 36th studio album by Bob Dylan, released by Columbia Records on February 3, 2015. The album consists of covers of traditional pop standards made famous by Frank Sinatra, chosen by Dylan. Speaking of his intention behind the album, Dylan stated:
I don't see myself as covering these songs in any way. They've been covered enough. Buried, as a matter a fact. What me and my band are basically doing is uncovering them. Lifting them out of the grave and bringing them into the light of day.-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
2015. . . . Shadows in the Night represents a lifelong appreciation for Sinatra, but more than that, Dylan is toasting a very specific era in pop songwriting.
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Rolling Stone
2012. On this quietly provocative and compelling album, Dylan enters the words and melody — as he did onstage — like a supplicant, in a tiptoe baritone through streaks of pedal steel guitar that suggest the chapel-like quiet of a last-chance saloon.
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The Guardian
2015. It’s merely to suggest that Shadows in the Night works as an unalloyed pleasure, rather than a research project. It may be the most straightforwardly enjoyable album Dylan’s made since Time Out of Mind.
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Consequence of Sound
2015. Dylan’s wisdom shows in his song selection. He’s opted to craft an album rather than curate a sampler. Consequently, themes of pining, loneliness, and love kindled, lost, or enduring cast long shadows throughout the record.
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The Telegraph
2015. It shouldn’t work but Shadows In The Night is quite gorgeous, the sound of an old man picking over memories, lost loves, regrets, triumphs and fading hopes amid an ambient tumble of haunting electric instrumentation. It is spooky, bittersweet, mesmerisingly moving and showcases the best singing from Dylan in 25 years.
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National Public Radio
2015. Fresh Air rock critic Ken Tucker says Dylan both infuses the songs with his personality, while also allowing them to be heard anew.
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All Music
2015. The fact that the feel is so richly idiosyncratic is a testament to just how well he knows these tunes, and these slow, winding arrangements are why Shadows in the Night feels unexpectedly resonant: it's a testament to how deeply Dylan sees himself in these old songs.
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Paste Magazine
2015. Shadows In The Night should be remembered as one of Bob Dylan’s greatest albums that extends the story of American music he began telling us with Self Portrait that carried through the albums Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong. It’s not rock and roll. It’s not party music, but Shadows In The Night is better than I can find words to convince with.
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Spill Magazine
His voice on this album evokes the Dylan we came to love way back when. Song after song, Dylan’s enunciation is clear as he sings each word with purposeful meaning. Dylan proves that at 73, he is still a singer – strong of voice and just as able to stay one step ahead of all who try to pigeonhole him or believe he’s nearing the end of what his voice can handle as ever.
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Uncut
2015. . . . while Shadows In The Night is nostalgic, it is not sentimental. As a celebration of classic songcraft, it is as sincere as any of Dylan’s many forays into traditional American roots idioms.
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Mojo
2015. . . . this extraordinary record is more refreshing burst than last gasp and its timelessness speaks more to life than death. With lyrics scribed by pros like Irving Berlin and Oscar Hammerstein and wrapped in Dylan’s musical naturalism, thoughts that were first expressed in, say, 1952 (Why Try To Change Me Now) ring true in 2015 and odds are will do the same in 2052..
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The Know Denver Post
2015. As he is wont to do, Dylan forgoes a major music norm here by eschewing multi-tracking in favor of live, one-mic recordings. It makes for audio blemishes, like amp feedback and the odd audible sniff, that some will loathe. But combined with the bare arrangements, it lends the proceedings a level of intimacy that Sinatra’s recordings have rarely achieved.
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Financial Times
2015. Neither too reverential nor too ironic, the nostalgia strikes exactly the right note, a fond fantasy of the past.
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Tiny Mix Tapes
2015. Dylan is rearranging, channeling, reinterpreting American musics, a magus, like he has been for decades.
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Los Angeles Times
2015. Strikingly unadorned and as emotionally raw as anything in the artist's canon, Dylan's new studio album is rich with moaning pedal steel lines and tonal whispers that drift in and out of measures.
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The Cinch Review
2015. Dylan’s voice, whatever its flaws, has never been captured so fully and warmly; the band’s bed of pedal steel, guitars, bass, and brushes underneath his voice has been captured with a depth and nuance that is unknown to most contemporary pop and rock recordings (including Dylan’s).
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Billboard
2015. On Shadows in the Night, the follow-up to 2012's excellent Tempest, the master songwriter plays interpreter, tackling 10 sentimental ballads recorded by Frank Sinatra in the 1940s, '50s and '60s.
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Drowned In Sound
2015. Good Dylan has always been about vitality and subversion… Shadows in the Night is an extremely well-made covers album that feels divorced from Dylan’s day-job.
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Diffuser
2015. But on his latest album, ‘Shadows in the Night,’ the iconic singer-songwriter delivers thoughtful, original interpretations while mining newfound depth.
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Spin
2015. The ostentatiously minor Shadows in the Night has no nine-minute songs, Biblical scenarios, jesters, preachers, gypsies, tarot cards, or citations of Rimbaud. It’s mostly just about a certain kind of way you can say the words “your arms,” and what it might mean.
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No Depression
2015. The real star of the album isn’t Dylan’s voice or Herron’s steel guitar – it is the sound of space. This is Dylan’s great gift to us in modern times. Here and now, in 2015, Bob Dylan has returned to us the artistry of the best of Frank Sinatra without resulting to imitation, nostalgia or caricature.
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The Arts Desk
2015. Dylan’s sweetly melancholic series of classics from the great American Song Book have a freshness that makes them totally of now.
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Jeff Burger
2015. But the most important “secret sauce” that makes this 36th studio album one of Dylan’s finer achievements is his voice, which seems little changed from the one we heard on his last few albums of new material.
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Slant Mgazine
2015. The album maintains an elegiac tone throughout, as Dylan balances out any hints of winking self-awareness by freighting his new compositions with a heavy air of wistful sadness, applying a sonic palette of slide and softly strummed acoustic guitars.
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Slug Magazine
2015. Certainly, this latest album demonstrates a certain bare-bones simplicity—a horn, the guitar and Dylan’s longing, signature somehow-this-is-singing vocals. In a way, this album comes across as remarkably humble in tracks “What’ll I do” and with a somewhat nostalgic and defiant attitude in “Why Try To Change Me Now.”
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Just Backdated
2015. All the songs on Dylan’s Shadows In The Night were recorded by Sinatra but where Bob differs from the others in his treatment of material from this era is in the sparseness of the backing. Instead of relying on a sweet orchestral backdrop, a soft cushion that in many ways emulates of the arrangements of the original recordings, Dylan’s interpretations use minimal backing, predominantly an electric bass and slide guitar with little else in evidence.
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No Ripcord
2015. The artistry on Shadows In The Night is as sharp as ever, which is a welcome reminder of how Dylan’s songwriting is only half the story. The emotional electricity of his albums stems from his composed and ardent delivery and the sonic poetry of the arrangements surrounding this delivery.
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The Austin Chronicle
2015. Eschewing obvious orchestral or piano accompaniments, Dylan recorded these 10 songs live in the echoing environs of Capitol Studios with members of his touring band, including local guitar hero Charlie Sexton. Sparse but thoughtful arrangements alternately dominated by steel guitar and plaintive horns complement Dylan's characteristic vocal delivery in twilight.
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All About Jazz
2015. The result is a wee- hours drift through the American psyche, one that is by turns eerie, achingly sad and warmly nostalgic, as Dylan pines for lost love, lost selves, waning life and the sentimental virtue of enduring.
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Pretty Much Amazing
2015. The man who sings on Shadows in the Night, who bends the American Songbook to his will with gravelly ease, of course began his career by making folk standards his snot-nosed own. So, Shadows is no lark: it’s a gentle and undulating return to Dylan’s salad days.
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Independent
2015. Dylan’s in better voice here than for some time – more weatherbeaten croon than husky croak, a sort of superannuated version of his Nashville Skyline nasal mode – with some surprisingly subtle touches. The results have a lingering, languid charm, which does, as he suggests, help to liberate the material from the rusting manacles of big-band and cabaret mannerisms.
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Glide Magazine
2015. Even though Bob Dylan’s Shadows in the Night may not wholly please die-hard fans or satisfy the curiosity of dilettantes, his latest studio album is already one of the most noteworthy records in his lengthy discography.
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AV Club Music
2015. For all the worry about Dylan tackling material popularized by the great Frank Sinatra, the most delightful surprise of Shadows In The Night is Dylan’s own voice. Due to the sparse, stripped-down arrangement of the music, there’s fortunately no place for him to hide, and his singing fits these songs much better than you might expect.
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Newsday
2015. At its best, "Shadows in the Night" takes classics and bends them to Dylan's will to build something memorable and new and, often, beautiful.
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Bearded Gentlemen Music
2015. These are good songs, even if they’re old, and Dylan treats them with respect. He doesn’t play around with the music, changing arrangements or tempos. And it works best if you’re willing to meet him there.
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The Fire Note
2015. Dylan covers tunes made famous by Sinatra with surprising success. Dylan is singing songs that have meaning for him, and when Dylan sings like he means it, the results are worth hearing.
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Irish Examiner
2015. This is an album of remarkable warmth, as if Dylan had imbued it with the glow of childhood memories (which is when he would first have heard many of these songs).
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Cherwell
2015. 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.
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USA Today
2015. The album is extraordinary. It won’t appeal to everyone, but there’s nothing else like it in the annals of modern music. Bob Dylan has reinvented himself once again, brushing off standards from the dustbin, demonstrating his genius by recording live with a minimalist band and reminding the doubters that the old man still has some life in that voice yet.
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Baugh's Blog
2015. This album is for Dylan fans - well, Dylan fans who like this sort of music. Shadows in the Night will probably not convince people who are indifferent to the man to hitch now to his wagon. But it might introduce a portion of his fans to the beauty of these pop standards. And that can only be a good thing. I've listened to this album over and over for the last few months. I recommend it.
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Las Vegas Weekly
2015. But he sounds stronger and more clear-headed than he has in years; in fact, Shadows in the Night reveals he’s an impressively nuanced, even-keeled crooner who sounds unabashedly romantic on some songs (“Stay With Me”) and utterly despairing on others (“Where Are You?”). As is his way, Dylan keeps people guessing—and comes out on top.
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Analog Planet
2015. That this album was performed live in the studio with Dylan singing in front of his touring musicians adds luster and drama to the proceedings wherein fans can hear and feel embedded in the performances Dylan’s life experiences expressed as only an older man and not a youngster playing one can.
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Chicago Tribune
2015. Because he understands his limitations so well, Dylan offers credible insight into these songs, and suggests that the distance between some of these standards and Dylan originals such as "Not Dark Yet" or "Ain't Talkin'" isn't that great.
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Live Mint
2015. Bob Dylan, his voice sweeter than it’s been in years, takes a trip down Tin Pan Alley His latest studio album, Shadows In The Night—his 36th—consists entirely of songs that were popularized by jazz crooners, more specifically Frank Sinatra. Dylan may not be known for his vocal prowess, but this album shows he can hold a tune.
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Off Beat Magazine
2015. Along with Dylan’s restraint and respectful arrangements, it’s his voice that turns out to be what is especially compelling. His inflections and intonations really give these songs the emotional weight that allows them to be revealed in new and highly-affecting versions.
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Qmunicate Magazine
2015. Where Sinatra was backed by swelling violins, perfectly muted brass section and tasteful drum-kit, Dylan strips this all back to a five piece band. In his own words this is not a “cover” but rather an “uncovering.” And indeed, these do not feel like covers. Dylan truly inhabits the songs, making them so present and so raw you want to curl up inside them and have your heart break along with him.
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My San Antonio
2015. It’s no surprise that it sounds broken and weird and, more frequently than you might expect, utterly captivating. . . . But Dylan brings just enough vulnerability and reverence to the material to make it work . . . .
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Richer Sounds
2015. The album is a gorgeous, melancholic work, showcasing some of his finest vocals in years.
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NY Daily News
2015. Surprise! On the new "Shadows in the Night," Dylan redefines the songs entirely, making them conform to his character rather than the other way around.
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The Line Of Best Fit
2015. By power-hosing these standards clean of the string-soaked syrup they've been drowning in for years, the songs are allowed to breathe, to reveal the raw hurt that's been buried under bombastic arrangements and the technically excellent yet lifeless, smug delivery of the contemporary titans of traipsing down the middle of the road.
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God Is In The TV
2015. It’s a gorgeous album overall, with a fantastic melancholy that makes it something to treasure. Covers albums can be hit or miss, but overall this is a fine example of one that works, and shows us that six decades in, Dylan is still capable of surprises.
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Adrian Thrills For The Daily Mail
2015. In tackling songs that he didn’t write, 73-year-old Dylan sounds liberated as a singer. So, does Dylan’s bittersweet crack at reinterpreting some of Sinatra’s trickiest ballads work? In theory, it shouldn’t. On record, it somehow does.
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Blues Magazine
2015. All in all Bob Dylan with Shadows In The Night has added another gem to his already immense oeuvre. Something completely different from, for example, Blonde on blonde, to mention the highlight in his career, but this restrained crooner Dylan can really charm me.
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Red Dirt Report
2015. Though Shadows in the Night may not make as large an impact as his previous ones, it reveals a more personal side to Dylan. The carefully selected classics are sung with such intimacy throughout the album, coming from an artist as respected as Dylan, it could still easily be used as inspiration for many other artists.
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Bebop Spoken Here
2015. Although these songs have been recorded by many other singers, this is Dylan's take on these tunes and, strange as it may seem to some, the album not only works, it's very good.
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Rotherham Advertiser
2015. It could have gone so-so-wrong but it has gone oh-so-right. It is clear that Dylan adores these great songs and wants to represent them with the honour they deserve.
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The McGill Tribune
2015. For older fans of both Dylan and Sinatra, the album is sure to bring back faded, loving memories. For newer audiences, the album is slow and steady, one that will stay with you just as these two great singers have continued influencing and inspiring musicians from past to present.
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Entertainment
2015. Shadows showcases an icon bowing before a canon that continues to thrive and find new acolytes in the same way that his own “Like a Rolling Stone” has. It’s the sound of Dylan, now 73, acknowledging his own mortality by reminding everyone that though the body may be temporary, the work can live forever.
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Pete Viney's Blog
2015. The arrangements are the standout aspect of the album. However, he creates a single mood and sound, and sticks to it rigidly throughout.
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Spotlight Report
2015. This is Dylan’s 36th studio album and is a tour-de-force of masterful restraint, deeply emotive vocals, and refined arrangements. What an accomplishment, in itself, to breathe new life into these well-worn old tunes.
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Hi The Floor Magazine
2015. Dylan tries to put some vocal maturity to this set of “standards” but completely falls flat. And here lies the issue… Standards by definition are songs that are crooned by great singers like Sinatra, not croaked out by a man whose vocal chords ripped in the late 70’s and never returned.
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The New Yorker
2015. While most of them, in their day, were recorded with orchestration, for this record he uses only his regular five-piece band and an occasional horn section. The over-all effect is both ephemeral and powerful.
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Peek A Boo Music Magazine
2015. If you thought the man could not sing, you should revise your opinion drastically, because Dylan treats the material with respect and makes it his own. The big band arrangements are replaced by a simple instrumentation of bass, pedal steel, drums and brass. This is music from the times before rock’n roll, music that Dylan has heard on the radio as a teenager.
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Americana Music Show
2015. As you might expect from covering Frank Sinatra, the delivery is classic crooning; a little bit slow, a little bit mumbly, a little bit boozy, a little bit strained. In other words, perfect for Bob Dylan's singing style.
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Write On Music
2015. Incongruous though it may seem, however, the mercurial legend proves himself surprisingly suited to these ten songs which Frank Sinatra recorded toward the middle of the last century.
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Post To Wire
2015. Bob Dylan has recorded many covers over the years but never has he arranged and performed them with such reverence and austere beauty as he does here.
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Lexington Herald Leader
2015. For a folk monument like Dylan, who you would think have played every stylistic card dealt to him by now, Shadows in the Night is the sound of something old made remarkably new.
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Comic Vine
2015. Overall, "Shadows in the Night" is a great edition in the Bob Dylan discography. Its not a innovative or ground breaking album by any means, but is a wonderful tribute to Frank Sinatra's music and a tribute to some of the best Pop songs that have ever been written.
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Jambands
2015. And, in classic Bob fashion, he tackles these treasured tunes penned by such acclaimed songwriters as Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cy Coleman and even Sinatra himself in a way entirely unique unto him.
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Hilltops
2015. Dylan’s homey and unpolished voice allows the listener to connect to the music that he is singing in a far easier fashion. His voice is not perfect, but his passion is palpable. It creates a connection, and the relatable effect that is achieved is what keeps listeners coming back again and again, over 36 albums and 50 years
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Stratford Press
2015. The surprising aspect, other than the music style far removed from what we've come to anticipate, is how clear his voice sounds. Yes, there's some of the raspiness we've witnessed over recent decades, but his phrasing and musicality is much better than we may have expected.
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Focus
2015. On his new album, however, he shows a surprisingly pure presentation. He sings through and measured and everything is canned live in one or two takes. His voice is that of a 73-year-old: weathered, a bit tired too. But Dylan determines his own conventions and feels the songs flawlessly.
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The Star
2015. As a singer, Dylan comes at these songs gently, too, with none of the blown-out misanthropy of his recent efforts in evidence. His voice is still audibly weather-beaten and occasionally strained to the limit, but its lived-in qualities suit the forlorn tone of Shadows in the Night exceptionally well.
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The New York Times
2015. And for these songs, Mr. Dylan presents yet another changed voice: not the wrathful scrape of his recent albums, but a subdued, sustained tone. It’s still ragged; he is 73. But he carefully honors the melodies, even the trickier chromatic ones, and he fully inhabits the lyrics.
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Blurt Magazine
2015. But what he has done here is more than a lark. He really loves what he’s singing, and it shows. And he has a lot still to teach us about the joys of music.
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Soul Surmise
2015. These songs might be old but in the hands of an old maestro minstrel they are quite intoxicating. There is no way I would give them 5 stars or 9/10 but they are certainly a surprisingly pleasant addition to Dylan’s catalogue; indeed much more than pleasant!
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Just Random Things
2015. BOB DYLAN UNVEILS MUSICAL GENIUS IN ‘SHADOWS IN THE NIGHT’ ALBUM. It is true that some of the songs are pure genius on it’s own accord. Bod Dylan tries to pull out something else in covering these songs on ‘Shadows in the Night’. He addresses the soul of music–that seems to be quite lost in modern songs.
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Loveland Reporter-Herald
2015. The hushed arrangements put even more emphasis on a voice that, let's face it, was never considered classic even before being ravaged by age. The remarkable thing is that he pulls it off, with crooning you've heard from Dylan before.
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Kaansen Kalling
2015. With a voice that’s sounding smokier and mustier as he approaches his mid -70s, and an orchestration that will make you long for candlelights or full-moon nights, low-lit bars or a sky filled with stars, Dylan does his own take on Sinatra. Effortlessly and elegantly, he does it his way.
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St. Albans & Harpenden Review
2015. Paying homage to these classic songs, which place love at the centre of a complex, challenging yet beautiful world, Bob Dylan has created a special album that is a significant addition to his peerless musical catalogue.
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Cambridge Music Reviews
2015. I don’t think it will quite join my list above, but it is a fine, atmospheric, intimate and emotionally-charged album, superbly played and sung.
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Cleveland.com
2015. Bob Dylan's new album almost sounds like the raspy-voiced rock and folk veteran is covering Edith Piaf instead of Frank Sinatra's standards. And it's wonderful.
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News Cult
2015. The record as a whole is pretty static, with Dylan choosing a mostly acoustic backing band, utilizing slide guitars and standup bass throughout.
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Record Mecca
2015. There’s been a lot written about Bob Dylan’s new album of songs sung by Frank Sinatra, Shadows in the Night. People seem to love it or hate it, and I can’t understand why. I think it’s a masterpiece.
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SF Gate
2015. It’s no surprise that it sounds broken and weird and, more frequently than you might expect, utterly captivating.
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Live For Live Music
2015. Shadows in the Night is a gorgeous and amazingly impressive new record. It would be a crime to merely label it as a cover album. Bob Dylan has rediscovered and reinvented these classic milestones of musical history and made them into something fresh and new.
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