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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A very underrated album, but not a classic, August 18, 2003
Shot of Love and the album that preceded it, Saved, have received, through the years, critical drubbings along the lines of what Dylan's recent movie Masked and Anonymous has garnered. His gospel period, in general, has almost always been looked upon in a generally negative light, and is only now starting to get the credit it deserves with the release of Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan, a collection which features contemporary gospel stars singing some of the man's best songs from the period.Where does Shot of Love fit into all this? It is an underrated album. However it is not a great album, or a classic. It is much, much more secular than the first two gospel albums; indeed, only one song -- Property of Jesus - is unabashedly Christian. Several of the songs -- Heart of Mine, Lenny Bruce, and possibly several others -- are not Christian at all. There is almost none of the fire and brimstone here that Slow Trained Coming was loaded with; neither is it unabashedly gospel, as Saved was. Dylan wraps the virtues of Christianity up in more everyday forms, and does not bash us over the head dogmatically here; it's barely self-righteous, and it doesn't preach to the choir. Music-wise, none of the songs are in actual gospel style; several are even poppy. Others rock quite hard -- harder than anything since the mid-60's, in fact. Piano is the lead instrument on several songs, often played by Dylan himself. The backup singers do a good job here, and aren't overly intrusive or robotic-sounding, as they sometimes had been in the past. The legendary Jim Keltner is excellent on drums, as always. As for Dylan's singing, let it be known that the album contains some of Dylan's best vocal performances ever. His voice is as sweet as honey on In The Summertime -- a beautiful performance. The Groom's Still Waiting At The Altar has one of Dylan's classic nasty snarls of a vocal -- echoing such classics as Positively 4th Street and Like A Rolling Stone -- something his voice was particularly well-suited to in the early 80's, though he didn't use it that way very often. The title track's vocal features a similar virtue, while containing the startlingly forceful lyric: "Why would I want to take your life?/You've only murdered my father, raped his wife/Tattooed my babies with a poison pen/Mocked my God, humiliated my friends." In a typical streak of perversity, Dylan saves his most beautiful vocal for his elegy to Lenny Bruce -- remember, this is a gospel album -- which is sung to a beautiful piano backdrop (anyone who says Bob can't play piano needs to listen to this album, which is chock full of his wonderful playing.) All of the tunes I've mentioned are key tracks. An undisputed highlight, however, is the aforementioned Groom, a ferocious, driving rocker that seems somewhat out of place on the album; indeed, it was not originally there. It is one of his best songs of the 80's -- and one gets to hear The Poet of Our Generation rhyme "January" with "Buenos Aries." The song was released as a B-side and tacked onto the album by virtue of popular demand. (It's a shame that some of the album's other outtakes weren't, too. One of them, Angelina, is a beautiful piece of music with some of Dylan's most enigmatic and complex lyrics.) However, ladies and gentlemen, all of this is superfluous. Because, and I say it without hesitation, the album is worth buying the album just to be able to hear Every Grain of Sand. This amazingly beautiful song features one of Dylan's most poignant, poetic lyrics, delivered to us through a highly-emotional and emphatic that never fails to drive me to tears every single time I hear it. It is fitting that it is the last song on the last album of Dylan's gospel period: it perfectly sums up everything that he'd been trying to say the whole time. Far removed from the dogma-toting, sometimes self-righteous preaching to be found in his earlier gospel songs, Every Grain of Sand manages to conjure up all of the beauty and the hope of faith, while also succinctly summarizing the darkness and the doubt that inevitably comes into the mind of any thinking, feeling man: "I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea/Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me." The song is further punctuated by not only Dylan's greatest-ever harmonica solo, but his two greatest (again, those who say that he cannot play the harp absolutely must listen to this masterful performance.) His solos are achingly sad, painfully lonely -- and yet redemptive, all at the same time. They're so emotional to be tear-jerking. It is one of the greatest songs he's ever written. I say quite simply: if this song doesn't move you, you have no soul. Dylan's choice of the penultimate line "I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man" is highly significant. As originally recorded, the line read "...of a perfect, finished plan." The latter seems to be more of a Christian viewpoint, whereas the former is more secular; the two lines are polar opposites, and change the entire meaning of the song and the conclusion that it draws. Are we really hanging in the balance of a perfect, finished plan... or just the reality of man? Dylan's use of the latter line on this album, especially since it is the last song on his last gospel album, leaves the entire period open to re-interpretation. Not Dylan's best album, and certainly not a classic. Some of the songs I haven't mentioned -- Dead Man, Dead Man, Watered-Down Love, Trouble -- are fairly lightweight, for Dylan especially. But you still owe it to yourself to buy this album for its great songs, and especially for Every Grain of Sand.
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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.
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by Bob Dylan 
