Category Archives: 2009 music reviews

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Bob Dylan – Christmas in the Heart

christmasintheheartJust what everybody was clamoring for… an album of Christmas classics sung in the dulcet tones of Mr. Bob Dylan! In a career of head-scratching surprises, on the surface Bob Dylan’s latest release, Christmas in the Heart, might just be the head-scratchingest.

Here are 15 traditional Christmas songs — everything from ‘Little Drummer Boy’ and ‘Winter Wonderland’ to ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ and ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’ — played totally straight, complete with a choir of backup singers that make Frank Sinatra’s “j-i-n-g-l-e bells” seem downright gritty.

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Elvis Costello – Secret, Profane and Sugarcane

sugarcaneElvis Costello has been releasing albums both major and minor about once a year for three decades now, which is an achievement in itself. That only one or two of them can be considered mediocre, and not one truly bad, is an astonishing accomplishment. And his latest album, Secret, Profane and Sugarcane, puts him in no danger of breaking that streak.

It is, though, one of his “minor” albums, a genre exercise that recycles a few older tunes and doesn’t aim too high. It’s a low-key collection of old-timey bluegrass numbers about carnival men and slave traders, loose women and broken-hearted men. The songs are not as innovative or strong on melody as Costello’s best output, but they work well as a group.

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Bob Dylan – Together Through Life

togetherthroughlifeMy recent post about the new video for Bob Dylan’s ‘Beyond Here Lies Nothing’ reminded me that I’ve been putting off my review of the album on which that song appears, Together Through Life.

It’s hard to believe that, at 68 years old, Bob Dylan is in the middle of a streak that rivals his output in the mid 1960s. From 1965-67, he released Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde and John Wesley Harding. That streak would be a career for most artists.

It took him a little longer this time, but from 1997 through this year, he has released Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, Modern Times and now Together Through Life — another streak that other artists must envy.

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Eminem – Relapse

relapseIt’s been five years since Eminem’s last album — the mediocre Encore — and I’m torn on whether his new one, Relapse, was worth the wait.

On the one hand, it is a return to form in many ways — the rhymes are fast and furious and Dr. Dre’s production particularly strong — but on the other hand, I wonder if Eminem in form is really enough of a draw anymore. The violent sexual fantasies that were so shocking and unsettling on his first two albums, especially when you found yourself guiltily chuckling through them, feel like retreads all these years later.

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Neko Case – Middle Cyclone

cycloneI’ve started writing this review in my head about ten times already but I’ve always stopped short of typing it out because it’s never felt quite right.

At one point I had what I thought was a pretty clever opening in mind: You know how they say “so-and-so’s voice is so good I’d listen to her sing the phone book?” Well, Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone is the closest I’ve come to testing that theory.

That was after I’d first gotten the album and I just didn’t get half of it. I was searching for melodies and choruses without much luck, left admiring the gorgeous vocals of the gorgeous Case but not really feeling the songs.

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