Slow Train Coming
| Bob Dylan
Slow Train Coming
Slow Train Coming is the 19th studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on August 20, 1979 by Columbia Records. It was Dylan's first effort since converting to Christianity, and all of the songs either express his strong personal faith, or stress the importance of Christian teachings and philosophy. The evangelical nature of the record alienated many of Dylan's existing fans; at the same time, many Christians were drawn into his fan base. Slow Train Coming was listed at No. 16 in the 2001 book CCM Presents: The 100 Greatest Albums in Christian Music.-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Rolling Stone
September 20, 1979. Bob Dylan has, at long last, come back into our lives and times, and it is with the most commercial LP he’s ever released. Slow Train Coming has been made with a care and attention to detail that Dylan never gave any of his earlier records.
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Ultimate Classic Rock
August 18, 2015. Bob Dylan's 19th album was transitional in more ways than one. For starters, the thin mix and wishy-washy production on Dylan's previous album, 1978's Street-Legal, occasionally distracted from how good some of its songs really were. That had to change on the new album. And so did something else. No stranger to defying his audience's expectations, Dylan – who was born Jewish – decided to explore Christianity at the end of the '70s. And he decided to make an entire album about his experiences.
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All Music
The unexpected side effect of his conversion is that it gave Dylan a focus he hadn't had since Blood on the Tracks, and his concentration carries over to the music, which is lean and direct in a way that he hadn't been since, well, Blood on the Tracks. Focus isn't necessarily the same thing as consistency, and this does suffer from being a bit too dogmatic, not just in its religion, but in its musical approach. Still, it's hard to deny Dylan's revitalized sound here, and the result is a modest success that at least works on its own terms.
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South China Morning Post
October 21, 2012. . . . Slow Train Coming, was polarising. Rolling Stone magazine's Jann Wenner insisted, "in time … it might be considered his greatest". Others couldn't get past lyrics such as "Ya either got faith or ya got unbelief and there ain't no neutral ground". Now it stands in his top 10 or 15 - high praise given the discography - and is certainly one of the best sounding.
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Countdown Kid
June 21, 2013. When it came out in 1979, it was practically impossible for anyone to separate the musical quality of Bob Dylan’s Slow Train Coming from the content of the album. It is the LP that heralded Dylan’s so-called “Born Again” period, in which his music often preached to the choir and scolded everyone else. Yet it’s easy to forget Slow Train Coming features one of Bob’s top backing bands ever, giving a soulful spin on his with-us-or-against-us proselytizing.
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Christianity Today
January 4, 1980. It is the sage-like message of Dylan's lyrics, the thoughtful, conscious, driven critiques of shallow dehumanizing vogues and bandwagon motifs to which victims and victimizers alike have responded. Dylan's uncompromised sensitivity and courage leave him free to name the self-debasing methods with which Americans have dulled their collective consciences in pursuit of prosperity, power, and the materialistic version of the "American dream."
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Everythingsgonegreen
October 15, 2016. The album is a lovely mix of quality musicianship and Bob baring his soul on all matters heaven and hell. There’s a genuine gospel feel to the whole thing, with very little, if any, filler.
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Warehouse Eyes
With the passage of time, it seems quite likely that Dylan's embracement of Christianity was an emotional crutch to get him over a difficult period in his life, and if that is the case then we should be grateful for "Slow Train Coming," the superb album that it produced.
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SA-CD.net
November 7, 2004. The album contains beautiful songs and has a consistent quality to it, that at times makes one long for an old fashioned blues rocker. Track 5 "Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking" makes up for that a little. Dylan's new found faith apparently calmed the waters because on track 6 he is back to the mellow, flowing melodies that make up this album.
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All Time Records
I'd say the best thing about Dylan finding Jesus - as far as his albums were concerned - was that it served to briefly revitalize his songwriting after the relatively disappointing Street Legal. It gave him an exciting new thing to write about, I guess.
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Lemon Wire
October 13, 2017. . . . . However Slow Train has been fairly re-evaluated as the beginning of a strange, but not reward-free period of Dylan’s discography, including some of the most electrifying live performances of his entire career.
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Off Your Radar
June 21, 2016. Throughout the album, Dylan explores the message of the gospel from a variety of perspectives. There’s the uplift of “Precious Angel” and “I Believe In You,” the coiled invective of “When You Gonna Wake Up” and the apocalyptic dread of the title track. A little balm for the soul, yes, but let’s burn it first with some fire and brimstone. Regardless of how deeply Bob was feeling it, there’s no doubt that he was engaging in the faith on his own terms.
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itunes Apple Music
Despite the album’s overtly Christian leanings, Slow Train Coming succeeds on a balance of accessibility (the Jackson Browne soundalike “Precious Angel”) and vulnerability (“When He Returns,” which features some of the most emotionally naked singing of Dylan’s career).
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Cross Rhythms
May 31, 2007. No matter how one approaches this album it remains a compelling selection of tracks and, graced as it is with Knopfler's inspired guitar, could also be ranked as one of the best albums that Dire Straits never made!
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Turk's Head Review
June 24, 2014. What makes “Slow Train” effective is the pressure cooker musical backing (featuring Mark Knopfler on guitar and the Muscle Schoals Horns ), Dylan’s intense delivery, and its many catchy lines.
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UNCUT
October 14, 2016. When it comes out in November 1979, the album’s religious ‘message’, the strident imperatives of “Gotta Serve Somebody”, “Slow Train”, “Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking” and “When You Gonna Wake Up”, is not an immediate concern. Most people are simply relieved that they have a Dylan album that unlike his last, Street-Legal, they can listen to without wincing at its plodding production and largely leaden playing.
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Independent
November 3, 2017. Slow Train Coming was at least a challenging and engaging album, with much typical imagery and complexity.
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Robert Christgau
The lyrics are indifferently crafted, and while their one-dimensionality is winningly perverse at a time when his old fans will take any ambiguity they can get, it does serve to flaunt their theological wrongheadedness and occasional jingoism. Nevertheless, this is his best album since Blood on the Tracks.
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Paul Rigby The Audiophile Man
February 22, 2016. This was Dylan’s unexpected turn to Christianity, embracing a born-again philosophy with enthusiasm. There is plenty of passion on this record but also a fair bit of tiresome dogma too. That said, the LP was a refreshing change, at the time and benefitted from its direct presentation.
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The Current
September 11, 2017. As a fan of his music it would be a mistake to never listen to this album: it has some very fine songs that stand the test of time, “Slow Train” for one, which seems to predict a lot of the world confusion that is only now materializing. And it certainly doesn’t have a preachy tone. In fact, “I Believe In You” and others could be read as simple love songs to someone who had made the great man think and question himself—a good exercise for all of us.
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500 Best Albums
November 10, 2011. But for our purpose here there was a time in 1979 when a prophet of a generation of one of the greatest songwriters in history took up his pen to create one of the greatest albums of all time.
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Consequence Of Sound
March 31, 2017. However, hidden beneath the overt proselytizing and the less-than-subtle cross-shaped pickax swung by the railroad worker on the cover art is a better album than anything Dylan would release during the upcoming decade.
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George Starostin's Reviews
This album should SUCK! And yet - for some strange reason, it doesn't. It sure has some filler, because when Bob gets particularly slow and mellow, the vibe strongly reminds me of Planet Waves - the same tuneless swamp of pointless guitars and melodyless vocals. But the rest - well, the rest just sends all kinds of possible shivers down my spine. I really don't know why, but these melodies are good - not as great as those on Desire, but not really worse and maybe even better than on Street Legal. They have some real hooks, they are tight and snappy, and they all just rule.
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Vinyl Me Please
. . . . Writing them off as misguided Christian rock — as a lot of people do — doesn’t capture how hard Slow Train Coming rules; it’s the first Dylan album with a gospel choir, and is, all things considered, his best blues-rock album. It’s like a warped version of Motown, with Dylan’s pinched vocals in the place of a rock vocalist.
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