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21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dylan's on the path which led to BLOOD., December 18, 2001
When NEW MORNING came out, it was after the wake of the critical and commercial disaster of SELF-PORTRAIT. As I said in my review of SELF-PORTRAIT, there are vestiges of a follow-up (and quite a good one at that) to NASHVILLE SKYLINE. SELF PORTRAIT suffers from an identity crisis, and quite a bad one at that, and some of it seems like a legitimate continuation of the direction Dylan was going and then, because of its excesses, there's a lot that seems like it's Dylan's attempt at throwing his audience and critics a curve ball. One thing should be noted, however. While many have noticed this was released quickly after SELF PORTRAIT, all of this music was cut and in the can before SELF PORTRAIT was ever released, and there is evidence of it being marked for release before the big fiasco of its predecessor.So what about NEW MORNING? This record just takes Dylan further into the domesticated lifestyle he was living and his music just shows it. Gone are the days of "electricity howls in the bones of her face," and instead we get Elvis send-ups and singing about leaving the kids at home for a weekend and doing jazz send-ups and some poetry set to music ("Three Angels"). While Dylan has always had his poetic flair, he generally fuses his music and his lyrics into a cohesive whole, but here it seems more obvious that it is just a poem. One thing that truly distinguished NASHVILLE SKYLINE was its very distinctive country feel. JOHN WESLEY HARDING, Dylan's release of 1967, had a very mystical feel to it, and while it had a country flavour, it was not a country album but a different animal altogether which I have never found again. It plays almost like an album about a past which no one in living memory can tell us about and manages to capture it in a mystical setting. NASHVILLE SKYLINE, on the other hand, has all the trade-marks of a country album, but the point is, both have an ascetic cohesion which carries them through into that coveted canon of essential music. All of Dylan's best albums have this cohesion as a trade-mark. NASHVILLE SKYLINE is the only country album that I listen too on a regular basis. It services as Dylan's tribute to that genre of music, and several of the ten cuts have become country standards, while also helping cement the idea of "country rock" being a viable form of art. You can tell Dylan is creating a masterpiece in his chosen genre that he wants to work in, creating one more untouchable album for the 1960s. Well, the 1970s roll around, and his infamous SELF PORTRAIT release is issued. I think there are traces of a great album hidden in the rubble that is SELF-PORTRAIT, and regardless, it still proves to be a fascinating album (see my review). It's torn between two directions and doesn't know which way to go, because Dylan starts with one agenda and ends with another. Had SELF-PORTRAIT trimmed itself back it would have been a worthy follow-up to NASHVILE SKYLINE. Now we come back to NEW MORNING. VoodooLord7's review gives you an excellent overview of the album itself, but the most important thing Voodoo points out is the lack of cohesion on NEW MORNING. Actually, I disagree that there is not any cohesion in this album, because there is. The problem is, Dylan is too much involved in his domestic life to put a lot of effort in his art. Voodoolord7 gives the excellent analogy of this being an album that Dylan would record in a cabin in the mountains, having a lazy, laid back feel too it, which it most certainly does. This is an album from a family man's perspective. In the 1960s, Dylan was a visionary, crafting some of the best music of our times. In the early 1970s, though, Dylan was married, had children, and was doing the family scene. He had settled down, and you can tell from his music. When you listen to NEW MORNING, you get the very distinct feeling that the album was cut by someone who was heavily involved with his family life, and while that is a good thing, the music produced in this period does not rise to the level previously reached by Dylan's music. The lack of cohesion that VoodooLord7 complains about is actually there; but it's not there enough to make this a truly essential Dylan album. The cohesion found on NEW MORNING is a domestic cohesion, with stories and songs that a father would sing to his children. While you can produce truly great music like this, Dylan does not, and his own muse works better working within established genres of music instead of established areas of life outside of the ascetic. People missed the old Dylan of the 1960s, but like the rest of us, Dylan progresses and evolves. But it must have been something of a shock to hear Dylan singing that children are calling him Pa and that's what life is all about when only five years ago he was belting out the lyrics to "Like a Rolling Stone." For his art, BLOOD ON THE TRACKS would never had come out had his life not been involved with family in the early 1970s. For my money, I'd rather Dylan (or anyone for that matter), had a good family life because that is more important than art. However, this family relationship began unraveling, and this period of domesticity culminated in BLOOD ON THE TRACKS, his greatest post 1960s album. Dylan had enough experience writing about family to turn out a truly great album, and while NEW MORNING and PLANET WAVES are not great albums, they are both thoroughly enjoyable minor works, NEW MORNING being the better album.
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Bob Dylan: "'Ruby, My Dear' by Monk was another one. Monk played at the Blue Note on 3rd Street...I dropped in there once in the afternoon, just to listen--told him that I played folk music up the street. 'We all play folk music,' he said." Read more musical excerpts from Chronicles, Vol. 1 on our Music You Should Hear page.
album New Morning 
