"Self Portrait" reminds me of Todd Haynes movie, "I'm Not There" (2007).

You are going to go over the 74 minutes of this record and you are going to ask yourself where the hell was Dylan in it? Most of the album is made up of versions of traditional songs or very popular tracks from other artists like "The Boxer" or "Blue Moon", so this is not a Bob Dylan album in terms of composition.

On the other hand, Dylan's vocal interpretation is not the one we ... read more

If you enjoy simple mundane lyrics and extremely repetitive rhythms, you are going to love this one.

For some reason reminds me of early Protomartyr, Parquet Courts and even some Le Tigre stuff, but this one is way more reverberant. Not innovative at all, but very interesting if you are in the correct mood.

The Kinks is a good example of those bands that never really succeed in USA because they were British to a point where people in the US were totally unable to understand most of the band rhetoric.

This “live” album was their second in this type of releases and there are a bunch of good reasons to listen to it. The first one is that the band was really mature at this point so they were totally confident about their performance on stage and you can see that in the way they modified ... read more

Recorded three years after "New Morning" this original soundtrack was an unexpected and (I must say) misunderstood twist in Dylan's career.

For sure is difficult to dive into Dylan's music without having the lyrics, I mean the guy is probably the best lyricist in the whole story of rock music (he won the nobel prize for it) so it is more or less obvious that you want to absorb his lyrics. And probably that's the main reason why "Pat Garret & Billy The Kid" never had ... read more

EDIT: I am going through some records I marked as my favorites during this year and... WOW! This brief but overwhelming album is one of those you can not miss (please do not do it), it is exceptionally superb. What a triumph!

OMG what a great album!!! (I know God has nothing to do with it but I needed to exclaim)

This is what you get when your ideas about what you want to do are totally clear but besides that you are full of passion and talent. Ashanti Mutinta knows perfectly what is going to ... read more

Tired of playing the "rock guy" role and hurt by Ron Asheton dead, but also inspired by the novel "The Possibility Of An Island" (Michel Houellebecq) Iggy took the decision to expand the limits of his musical repertoire making an album that we can classified as "europop".

Since the first minute you can note, this is going to be the type of album you can not skip without trying to understand what was happening with the artist involve in the project. Everything is ... read more

What should you expect from a Christmas album?

Some of us are looking for a new view to the classic christmas catalog (or a totally renew set of songs) other people just want the traditional songs performed by a new artist, but mostly unchanged in terms of musical approach. It is very likely that everyone of us have a different answer to that question, and that is probably one of the reasons why this album, as a musical phenomena, it is so controversial. You are going to find people that ... read more

This is a complicated record. I mean if Bob was really thinking to create this songs as a "gift" for his 4 yo daughter, you need to be heartless to not understand the guy was trying to be simple an a little bit playful. Otherwise, if this idea is just part of the rock mythology and that never happened, this album is not a good one.

The lyrics are quite simple and in some cases really repetitive (2X2; Wiggle Wiggle; 10000 Men) and in some passages the music could be incredible ... read more

Let's say the eighties was not a good decade for many of the artists which were already doing their thing in a pretty confident and respectful way during the seventies (we can argue about that, but the examples are there for dozens).

Dylan was "immune" to the eighties effect at the beginning of the decade because of his religious fervor and then He released his 80s masterpiece, so even when you can see some 80s missteps on "Infidels" He was doing quite good. But the final ... read more

What is wrong with the world? How did we end up enjoying this type of musical nightmare? I must say I am unpleasantly captivated by this record.

This album is far more interesting than any typical black metal work. For sure you are going to find the natural enjoyable elements that shape the traditional black metal offer but you are also going to find thousands of nice synths, some krautrock reverberant passages, twisted musical landscapes and extremely annoying vocals. All of them putted ... read more

I am not sure if “Down In The Groove” is the most frustrating record from Dylan’s catalog, but if it’s not, for sure is one of the main contenders.

You are going to find a bunch of big names involved in the album. Robert Hunter, Eric Clapton, Jerry Garcia, Steve Jones, Paul Simonon, Mark Knopfler and a long list of etc, but beside this Hall Of Fame list of people, the only thing you are going to find is a big sensation of “what were they trying to do with ... read more

As a concept, the idea to add an album to the almost perfect set of records made by the band during their first incarnation was a huge challenge. But for some reason Ron and Scott Asheton, Steve MacKay, Mike Watt and Iggy himself thought the idea was good enough to give it a try. Unfortunately in the real world to be able and convinced, it is not enough argument to make a good album.
The music has nothing specially rewarding, the lyrics are terrible ("My Idea Of Fun Is Killing ... read more

Very nice to listen but you can also notice they still had a lot space to improve at that point.

Things could not get worse after “Saved” (1980) and that is the reason why “Shot Of Love” even when it is just a regular album, is a very pleasant listen (especially if you are able to ignore most of the lyrics).

In terms of music approach, this is the most rock oriented album of the religious era. “Shot Of Love”, “The Groom’s Still Waiting at The Altar” and “Trouble” are all on the same very nice rock blues corner. Simple ... read more

Damn! I was not expecting much from this record and is such a nice listen.

Let’s start saying that “Saved” is for sure an interesting album. Maybe the reasons are not musical at all, but as a phenomena it is quite remarkable.

Even when there are almost unanimous agreement in terms of its poor musical quality, there are a bunch of people arguing all the bad reviews are related to the Christian lyrics and nothing else. They said if you can be open minded or just forget about the lyrics, this is going to be a good passionate gospel album, particularly ... read more

Every artist has the right to record one messy and purposeless album.

It is difficult to understand what Dylan was thinking when He decided to put all this tracks together. It is not only that there are no concept behind the album, I mean, almost every track has a totally different musical vibe (I am not going to go deeper over the reggae, tropical, happy mess of “Precious Memory”), in terms of musical structure many of them goes nowhere (“They Killed Him”; “Got ... read more

What a pleasant trip!
This was the album where Hammond finally proved his weight to all the people convinced “The Strokes” was a Casablancas success.
Perfect balance for an incredible and superbly well mixed pop record. Hammond at his best.

With the exception of “Crazy Beat”, this record has aged wonderfully.

It is curious how a couple of bad reviews from very popular sources can bury an album forever.

I mean, it is true that this album was built based on outtakes from Self Portrait. It is also true that Dylan was not happy with this ralease, but come on! the man was justifiably pissed off, this was a very nasty move from Columbia. But if you are able to avoid all the non musical noise around the album, the simple truth is that this brief set of songs it is not forgettable at all, specially the ... read more