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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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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New Bob Dylan video ignites controversy

dylanvidIFC recently aired a short film set to the song ‘Beyond Here Lies Nothing’ from Bob Dylan’s latest album Together Through Life and it’s caused quite a stir.

The song — the album’s first single — already has an official video consisting of black and white stills of young people in the 50s. This new clip is something else altogether.

Directed by Australian Nash Edgerton, the video is a real-time Tarantino-esque showdown between a man and the woman he is apparently keeping hostage in his apartment. Go ahead and watch it after the jump before I continue.

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New Dylan due in April

Excellent news!

According to Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan will release a “surprise” follow-up to 2006’s excellent Modern Times, to be released in late April.

The disc has the live-in-the-studio feel of Dylan’s last two studio records, 2001’s Love and Theft and 2006’s Modern Times, but with a seductive border-cafe feel (courtesy of the accordion on every track) and an emphasis on struggling-love songs. The effect — in the opening shuffle, “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’,” the Texas-dancehall jump of “If You Ever Go to Houston” and the waltz “This Dream of You” — is a gnarly turn on early-1970s records like New Morning and Planet Waves.

Song of the Day #222: ‘Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine)’ – Bob Dylan

rondylaSticking with the Bob Dylan thread, I move on to this Mark Ronson-produced remix of the Blonde on Blonde song ‘Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll go Mine).’

Ronson, best known for producing albums for Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen, released in 2007 his own album of cover songs, giving his treatment to the work of artists including Ryan Adams, The Smiths, Coldplay, Radiohead and Britney Spears.

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