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Nov 20, 2014Lost on the River recalls the spontaneity and sheer love of music-making of the original, but it’s not hamstrung by reverence or caution.
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Nov 11, 2014Lost On The River is a joyful record, and everyone sounds like they had a lot of fun making it. And, for once T Bone Burnett seems to have been content to steer the proceedings without imposing his very recognizable production style on top of every recording.
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Dec 19, 2014The album is as loose and free as anything that Dylan And The Band recorded during that time. [Dec 2014, p.66]
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Dec 15, 2014While the record’s bloat does kind of compromise its overall consistency and cohesion, Lost on the River probably still has more of the year’s best songs in one place than almost any other album.
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MojoNov 19, 2014It's song-setting, rather than scene-stealing. [Dec 2014, p.86]
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Nov 19, 2014There’s no doubt that The New Basement Tapes: Lost on the River is an interesting experiment, and there’s certainly lots of good music contained on the album.
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MagnetNov 12, 2014Despite an approach that can occasionally feel too reverent, these unreleased lyrics get a fittingly old, weird treatment that makes complete sense. [No. 115, p.51]
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Nov 11, 2014Costello, James, Mumford, Goldsmith and Giddens put their disparate origins aside and pull together as a team. They clearly own these songs, and ply them accordingly. Both credence and comradery play crucial roles here, elevating this effort to that of an essential acquisition.
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Nov 10, 2014Maybe they’re mostly polished pop songs where the ’67 cuts embodied the raw, haphazard spirit of a songwriting era long gone--one that intuitively anticipated the impeccably executed Americana and folk heard on these new recordings--but the idea behind their origin will help them remain as timeless as the originals.
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Nov 10, 2014The songs unfurl as they go, gathering resonance and gravity. But the personalities of the songwriters, who are bandleaders on their own, push through.
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Nov 13, 2014Like the original Basement Tapes, Lost on the River plays more like a sampler than a carefully sequenced, cohesive album. While this leads to an uneven listen, it also accentuates the group’s range of abilities.
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UncutNov 10, 2014Lost On The River is an album of good, sometimes excellent songs with a unique creation story which, in the end, adds little substance to the narrative of perhaps the most mythologised recordings in musical history. As footnotes go, however, it's an entertaining, energised and often fascinating one. [Dec 2014, p.64]
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Nov 10, 2014Burnett and the New Basement Tapes remain faithful to the spirit of The Basement Tapes yet take enough liberties to achieve their own identity, which is a difficult trick to achieve.
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Nov 11, 2014Nearly every track on Lost on the River has a couple of memorable moments: a marvelous turn of phrase, a brief Jim James guitar meltdown, an instant of the band members discovering how their voices can harmonize. But what it lacks is the casual joy of Dylan's Basement Tapes.
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Q MagazineNov 13, 2014You are, unfortunately, left wondering how the 26-year-old Dylan would have sung them. [Dec 2014, p.113]
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Nov 12, 2014About half of them work, though which half might depend on your love or tolerance for the players involved.
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Nov 12, 2014Kind of like almost any Dylan covers album, really, you just wish the man himself were doing this.
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Nov 12, 2014The New Basement Tapes is a mostly pleasant collection of sleek and sometimes forgettable tunes.