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Sep 13, 2012Dylan is in mostly excellent form--even when sloppy; it sounds like he's having the time of his life.
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Sep 5, 2012Tempest is fantastic, but being impressed by Dylan is old hat. That he still finds ways to surprise us is an achievement beyond all comprehension.
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Oct 4, 2012As with the albums that have come in its wake, this one will be compared to 1997's Time Out Of Mind, the last truly great Dylan disc. Though not of that caliber, Tempest finds Bob Dylan still very much in the game.
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Sep 7, 2012Though all are blessed with a wry and dusty charm that's hard to dislike, too many are rolled out in a way that seems more to do with autopilot than passion. Narrow Way and Duquesne Whistle mighty be jaunty toe-tappers but they're also examples of the lightweight fluff that blows around the album.
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Oct 2, 2012While at this stage of his career a new Dylan release may only be heard by longtime listeners, it must be judged against all music. Even by such lofty standards, Tempest succeeds enormously, placing it not only in the upper half of Dylan's catalog, but also with the better submissions of 2012.
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Sep 19, 2012With its live wet vocal production, bleaker-than-black lyrical mien and varied musical layers, the album could be one of the Minnesotan folk singer's finest ever, a richly diverse and dire epic revolving around the burning suns of love, death, truths and lies with only two weak songs in the bunch.
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Sep 17, 2012His most recent albums, however, have been uniformly excellent, and that includes Tempest.
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Sep 7, 2012Most of it is an inspired mix of blood and bawdiness.
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Sep 12, 2012Tempest delivers yet another collection of the ramblers that have populated Dylan's records since Time Out of Mind.
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Sep 12, 2012The coherence of Tempest is the hypnotic key to its charm.
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Sep 5, 2012Thirty-five albums in, Dylan remains as magical and mysterious as ever.
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Sep 25, 2012Tempest is a mixed bag of ideas at best, many of which would be better served by someone like Tom Waits.
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Sep 11, 2012How much you admire this record will depend on how redolent you find two of them: the quiet jeremiad "Scarlet Town" and the quieter love-triangle cut-'em-up "Tin Angel.
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Sep 6, 2012The record underscores his real strength, as a musical storyteller.
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MagnetDec 4, 2012Surprisingly, Dylan has never been more deliberate or so overtly savage. [No. 93, p.54]
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MojoSep 19, 2012Tempest is Dylan's best musical album of this century, a vibrant maximising of strict rules and the savaged-leather state of that voice. [Oct 2012, p.84]
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Sep 11, 2012Tempest is a flawed but mostly fascinating album.
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Sep 10, 2012Tempest is a relentless exploration of bleakness.
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Sep 17, 2012On Tempest, Dylan easily puts to rest those detractors who claim that he's merely standing on the shoulders of greater artists.
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Sep 6, 2012This is one of his best albums in many years, although that's not exactly a ringing endorsement.
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Sep 11, 2012There aren't many records like this one, and if you give it time and it catches you, you'll probably still be listening to it when the deal goes down and your own ship comes in.
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Sep 13, 2012on Tempest, his latest album, Bob Dylan mostly sounds insane. That volatility can yield tremendous rewards-- on the ferocious "Pay in Blood", it clarifies his nihilism, his cruelty-- but it can also be distractingly unruly, inching toward self-mockery, all wild undulation and hairball-retch. Which would be okay-- embraced, even!-- if the rest of Tempest didn't feel so rote.
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Sep 10, 2012If it indulges in itself too much in moments [with long-running songs], Tempest is still a great album, though not the late-career defining collection that early buzz claims.
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Sep 17, 2012We're now at a place where we can pretty well look at Dylan's career as, essentially, an entire body of work--and, even when considering all of the obvious highlights of his past half-century, Tempest still stands out.
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Q MagazineSep 6, 2012But for a little judicious editing, it's a pleasure we could have shared with him. [Oct 2012, p.99]
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Sep 4, 2012[Tempest is] a thing to behold.
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Sep 10, 2012This crustily hammy, crowd-pleasing side of Dylan is one of his most satisfying.
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Sep 12, 2012As a sonic experience, Tempest kicks most Dylan albums in the cojones.
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Sep 6, 2012The music is the same stew of beautifully played blues, rockabilly, folk and country as every Dylan album for the last 12 years.
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Sep 7, 2012It's on "Early Roman Kings" that the various strains come together most effectively, with Hidalgo's organ added to another Muddy Waters blues-stomp groove, and Dylan blurring history again in his depiction of the titular Romans "in their sharkskin suits, bowties and buttons, with their high-top shoes" – neatly underlining the gangsterism of imperial invaders of all eras.
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Sep 10, 2012King Lear probably sounded like this after a couple of days on the heath.
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Sep 10, 2012He sings forcefully, in a raspy, phlegmy bark that's not exactly melodic and by no means welcoming. Battered and unforgiving, he's still Bob Dylan, answerable to no one but himself.
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Sep 10, 2012It's his strongest album since Love and Theft in 2001, and still there's no pinning him down.
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The WireDec 5, 2012[Tempest has] a sense of dues paid as a continual creative replenishment, rather than a swansong. [Nov 2012, p.63]
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Sep 11, 2012Tempest's epic scale and grandeur makes his few previous albums look like short stories leading up to a great novel.
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Sep 11, 2012Tempest is in many respects the most far-reaching, provocative and transfixing album of Dylan's later career.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 71 out of 87
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Mixed: 5 out of 87
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Negative: 11 out of 87
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Sep 11, 2012
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Sep 11, 2012
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Sep 11, 2012