Triplicate

You can hear allusions Dylan has made to some of these lyrics in his own work over the last few decades, which makes the collection all the more revelatory. And he sings as gorgeously and clearly as he possibly can, as if it’s more important to him than ever that we feel his love.

A song isn't a song without melody, harmony and voice. Time and again he proves the same thing on Triplicate.

The world is undeniably richer for his guided tour through the trove of songs that helped lay the foundation for American music.

Triplicate allows us to experience the rare and intimate pleasure of listening to an artist connect with, and express the subtle and infinite joys suggested by a great song.

Dylan has grown into that role, whether through divine inspiration or sheer repetition. He’s musically simpatico with his veteran touring band, and like Joni Mitchell on her later records, his voice has deepened, developed an appealing smokiness.

Triplicate’s greatest triumph is to strip cheap sentiment from the poetry by dimming the lacquer of the brass and muting the swagger of the singer, leaving the songs to crackle like revenant vignettes in the wireless of the mind. [May 2017, p.63]

While Dylan fans surely miss his original tunes, this honest, affecting tribute to a bygone era of music is a treat in itself.

Triplicate proves that his ability to interpret the Great American Songbook is equally worthy of recognition.

His delivery is tender and delicate, his phrasing measured and sharp, and to the point that the voice cracks and flat notes that do inevitably arise seem by design, only adding to his emotional vulnerability. Acting as producer under his pseudonym Jack Frost, Dylan pristinely captures the subtle dynamics of his live touring band, adding only subdued horn charts by James Harper.

It’s a wisely curated selection--despite these not being Dylan’s lyrics, it’s impossible to listen to the likes of September of My Years and not hear the resonance of autobiography.

Triplicate is not a shining hour for Dylan when put into the full context of his fifty-plus-year career. But nonetheless, his insuppressible spirit is baked into every moonstruck moment.

If Dylan learned anything from Sinatra, it's how to drill to the core of the song. Dylan does just that on Triplicate, finding the heart beating within some old warhorses and placing them within several great American musical traditions, and that's why this cements his place as one of the most distinctive interpreters of the Great American Songbook.

He's all over the phrasing but never sloppily and always expeessively. [No. 141, p.52]

It’s a truly overwhelming amount of a somewhat good thing.

For all its easy charms, Triplicate labours its point to the brink of overkill. After five albums' worth of croon toons, this feels like a fat full stop on a fascinating chapter. [May 2017, p.22]

The sheer volume of material on offer soon succumbs to the law of diminishing returns.

One does get the sense of life behind these performances, of private experience refracted through universal sentiment, of hard knocks transubstantiated into easy wisdom, but, as is often the case with Bob Dylan, the drama remains mostly internal.

Certainly, there's an absurdity about the great man wrapping his frail tonsils around vocally acrobatic piece like Stormy Weather. Yet, his passion for the task of rescuing these poetic tunes from cultural obscurity is palpable. [Jun 2017, p.106]

Occasional lines jerk out of the mix as Dylan struggles for control of his vocal chords. But his unique phrasing and delivery is usually right on the nose of the song’s meaning.