Down in the Groove
| Bob Dylan
Down in the Groove
Down in the Groove is the 25th studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on May 30, 1988 by Columbia Records. A highly collaborative effort, it was Dylan's second consecutive album to receive almost unanimous negative reviews. Released during a period when his recording career was experiencing a slump, sales were disappointing, reaching only number 61 in the U.S. and number 32 in the UK.-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Rolling Stone
July 4, 1988. Down in the Groove is just as confusing, frustrating and intermittently fab now as it was in earlier incarnations. The most annoying thing about Down in the Groove is that unlike Dylan’s last LP, Knocked Out Loaded, which was a bona fide mess, there is real possibility amid the chaos.
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All Music
If the diffuseness of Knocked Out Loaded was excusable due to its collaborators and various recording sessions, Down in the Groove has less of an excuse, since it's relatively from the same time period, even if it's culled from several different sessions with several different backing band.
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Countdown Kid
July 5, 2013. For many Bob Dylan aficionados, 1988’s Down In The Groove represents a continuation of the alarming indifference Bob showed on his previous effort, Knocked Out Loaded. There is no doubt that the “Groove” was more like a rut in terms of Dylan’s songwriting; only two songs on the record were true originals, and they were far from top-notch.
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Blog Critics
October 7, 2008. Down In The Grove finds Dylan at a low point in his career. There is no “Brownsville Girl” to provide a ray of hope. The songs come from a number of different sessions and are haphazardly thrown together to form this release.
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Vanity Fair
November 22, 2013. What a difference a quarter-century makes! Another hodgepodge of covers and originals that disappointed as “the new Dylan album” turns out to be fairly delightful as “a 25-year-old curio.”
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Stuart Glover
2011. You might with some effort learn to like this album, but its lack of vision and its dearth of good songs means it sits awkwardly with Dylan’s early work—but then most things do.
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Entertainment
March 29, 1991. Another loose collection of different sessions. Wildly unbalanced.
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Robert Christgau
Where Self-Portrait was at least weird, splitting the difference between horrible and hilarious . . . not a single remake honors or desecrates the original. All he can do to a song is Dylanize it, and thus his Danny Kortchmar band and his Steve Jones-Paul Simonon band are indistinguishable, immersed in that patented and by now meaningless one-take sound. And yet, and yet, there's a glimmer--the Dylan-Hunter throwaway "Ugliest Girl in the World," guaranteed to remind the faithful how much fun the one-take ethos used to be.
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Adrian's Album Reviews
Receiving across the board negative reviews, 'Down In The Groove' seemingly cemented Dylan's position as a one-time pioneer who had completely lost his way. The songs come from half a dozen different recording sessions dating back to 1983 or so.
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Guitar Player
July 27, 2012. Down in the Groove isn't as bad as the albums I've ranked below it (which I know is sort of obvious) because its songs don't really have that '80s sound, they rock a bit -- and some of the songs are a bit catchier. The rest of the album doesn't do much for me.
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People
July 25, 1988. By now, with Down in the Groove, the creative cupboard seems completely bare. No fresh ideas, no good songs, amateurish arrangements, bad singing—this baby’s got it all. It should be retitled Down in the Mouth.
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Mark's Record Reviews
Just a bunch of lame blues rock songs. Production is decent, but the backup singers are as unnecessary as the album as a whole.
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George Starostin's Reviews
It could have been the best... were this the only Dylan album. As it is, it's easily one of the worst.
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Warehouse Eyes
I do not think that anybody could consider "Down In The Groove" worthy of Dylan's undoubted talents. That said, if he had treated the bulk of the album with the enthusiasm evident on the last three tracks, it would certainly have been a better record, but there is too much to suggest that he was just going through the motions.
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The Daily Beast
May 24, 2016. Not even a pair of lyrical collaborations with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter could save this easy-breezy, boring-as-hell trainwreck.
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Pierce's Press
October 24, 2014. Clearly the fifth-worst Dylan album (but also his fourth-best 80s album), it’s worth mentioning that uneven output was expected of Bob Dylan by 1988, and this low-key collection is certainly that. It is also one of the more interesting Dylan albums of the 80s, a decade many call the worst in rock history. None of this sounds overly appetising; but Down in the Groove is a tattered, unpretentious, guilty pleasure.
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Clem's Music Reviews
The best thing you can say about this album is that it doesn't sound anything like his last few releases that were littered with too much eighties influence. This record has a much more straight-forward, generic feel that is quite refreshing and compliments Dylan's style very well. The downside to this record is that it sounds a bit haphazard - that he's trying to do too many things, too many styles and using too many different sets of musicians
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