Shadows in the Night

His voice raw, pitchy and quivering, Dylan croons his way through elegantly crafted songs with seeming disinterest in flawless takes or perfect pitch. Yet it's profound, thematically devastating and so well curated as to feel essential.

Shadows in the Night works as an unalloyed pleasure, rather than a research project. It may be the most straightforwardly enjoyable album Dylan’s made since Time Out of Mind.

Some will scoff, but imagine a beloved grandfather at a family gathering singing ballads of love and yearning from his lost youth, and you will get some idea of the power of this extraordinary record.

The artistry on Shadows In The Night is as sharp as ever, which is a welcome reminder of how Dylan’s songwriting is only half the story. The emotional electricity of his albums stems from his composed and ardent delivery and the sonic poetry of the arrangements surrounding this delivery.

Every performance on Shadows In The Night expresses a level of vocal maturity and intuition that he’s never quite reached before.

As a celebration of classic songcraft, it is as sincere as any of Dylan's many forays into traditional American roots idioms. [Mar 2015, p.65]

Due to the sparse, stripped-down arrangement of the music, there’s fortunately no place for him to hide, and his singing fits these songs much better than you might expect.

What he has done here is more than a lark. He really loves what he’s singing, and it shows. And he has a lot still to teach us about the joys of music.

That Shadows In The Night is almost as convincing is a welcome reminder that for all his understandable plaudits as a poet and songwriter, the latter-day Dylan is primarily a protector and reviver of arcane American music traditions--and, above all, a genuine vocal stylist.

The music means the world to him, and it's wonderful.

There’s no sarcasm, cynicism or irony on this disc; no hipster coolness, not vocal embellishments. Shadows in the Night is clearly an act of love and honor.

If Tempest was hellfire apocalypse romance, prophesied steampunk armageddon, then Shadows in The Night is the revelation of the true nature of the American songbook.

Far from an indulgent wallow in saccharine nostalgia--and disproving absurd accusations of a quick-buck dip into a fountain of easygoing oldies a la Rod Stewart--the album is lean and subtle

[A] quietly provocative and compelling album.

Making the most of Capitol's Studio B--a Los Angeles landmark where Sinatra recorded--Dylan captures his band live, with stirring intimacy. As curator, he gets credit for avoiding obvious hits like "Stardust" and "Fly Me to the Moon," instead picking "Why Try to Change Me Now?" and the show-stopping closer, "That Lucky Old Sun," an old sufferer's plea for relief

On the new Shadows in the Night, Dylan redefines the songs entirely, making them conform to his character rather than the other way around.

The fact that the feel is so richly idiosyncratic is a testament to just how well he knows these tunes, and these slow, winding arrangements are why Shadows in the Night feels unexpectedly resonant: it's a testament to how deeply Dylan sees himself in these old songs.

The pace of Shadows doesn’t vary from a stately waltz time, even on the 4/4 tracks. The treatments are of a piece: Dylan’s lived-in croon to the fore, breathing close to the mic as his heroically discreet band swoon and groan around him.

The results have a lingering, languid charm, which does, as he suggests, help to liberate the material from the rusting manacles of big-band and cabaret mannerisms.

Shadows doesn’t so much reimagine these songs as Dylan-ize them in exactly the way you’d expect.

Shadows is no lark: it’s a gentle and undulating return to Dylan’s salad days.

Dylan's voice does the same things it does for so many of his own songs: pries open unfamiliar seams of feeling inside phrases long abandoned to cliché. It helps that this may be the best-produced album of his career.

Not every song thrives under Mr. Dylan’s treatment. “Some Enchanted Evening” is stiff, and “Why Try to Change Me Now” denies the song’s humor. But even when it falters, Shadows in the Night maintains its singular mood: lovesick, haunted, suspended between an inconsolable present and all the regrets of the past.

The songs chosen are elegiac, and Dylan balances out any hints of winking self-awareness by freighting his new compositions with a heavy air of wistful sadness.

The real treat in hearing Dylan rework tunes like "Autumn Leaves" is a slow-motion, humanistic view of how he finds the song's critical path.

While Shadows in the Night may ultimately be remembered as a brief detour on Dylan’s larger journey, it’d be a shame to dismiss this collection as a mere novelty or flight of whimsy.