Triplicate

Third album in a row made only by covers of classic American songs, divided on three discs (10 songs each) to make a total of 30 songs and 95 minutes of Dylan crooning like if this was his first album of this type.

After two albums totally similar in nature, the truth is that Triplicate adds very little to the mix. Nevertheless, you can see how Dylan was getting better and more comfortable with this type of exercise, delivering a performance that actually it is quite enjoyable. It is obvious that He treats this classics with huge respect and you can see that a great feeling of nostalgia is all over the tracks. In my opinion that’s the most charming point of everything.

Otherwise, you need to be on a very special mood to go through this album. I can honestly say that there is no song on the whole record that you can find annoying or embarrassing but the problem is that at the same time you can say that there is no big variations all across this 90 minutes of music, and that requires a lot of patience, specially if you are not a hard dying Dylanist.

The instrumentation is ok (this set was recorded live with no overdubs which is not a regular thing nowadays) and the arrangements are classy and well developed, but the whole journey is unfortunately quite flat. The good thing is that if you are going to blame somebody about the way the album was conceived, that one has to be Dylan (he was self producing this work under his Jack Frost identity), so at the end of the day He is the genius and the villain behind everything.

These three records (from Shadows In The Night to Triplicate) marked a very disturbing period in Dylan discography and that’s not because they are bad (in my personal list Fallen Angels is actually very well placed), it is because when you think on Dylan, you think on the marvelous songwriter everyone of us admire and this set of records gives the impression that maybe he lost his inner voice. On the other hand, maybe this was just a necessary break to comeback on top form. I would like to believe on the second explanation.