The Album Review Club - Week #147 - (page 1942) - Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan

[Out on blue 6]

It's always good when an album comes up that you haven't heard for a while and makes you re-evaluate.
Of course that can be an issue if upon listening it's not as good as you remember.
No such worry with this one.

This is how someone else described this so I'm using it as I probably wouldn't be able to articulate myself as well

The ultimate urban album of someone wandering the rainy streets under skyscrapers with yellow panel lights and walking under mirror puddles between taxi's with blurred red tail lights past clubs and bars with glaring neon lights.
Past strangers who's eyes never meet on their way on their nocturnal routes to someplace out of the view around corners dampened in shadows and dim lights.

That's the feeling it's evokes in me.
Scores. In my own collection it's an easy 8 and against other albums in the thread it's a 9 so I'll split the difference and say 8.5.

 

[RobMCFC]

At some point our children stop wanting us to sing lullabies to them. I don’t remember when it was with mine, but I remember conflicting feelings about the fact they no longer felt the need for them. Great that they felt secure enough to do without them and to see them growing and developing before my eyes but sad that a particular time had passed.

But I never really gave a thought to the lullabies themselves. Like imaginary friends, stopped in their tracks, put aside never to grow and develop with the child they had once offered so much to.

But what if the lullaby wasn’t abandoned in infancy, what if lullabies did indeed adapt and grow with us even into adulthood?

What if instead of always taking us to our chosen destination, the lullaby could take a more nuanced tone, maybe even a darker noirish one, reflective of the fact that our dreamland doesn’t always turn out to be the destination we dreamt it to be?

What if the perspective changed from calming pastoral scenes to the rain splattered window of the cab with the orange sodium streetlights reflected in the droplets.

What if the narrative changed from sleepy heads on pillows, to heads lying on partially misted glass; as you both stare out of your side of the cab because, even as you still tightly clutch each other hands, you know it isn’t going to end well but you are not yet ready for it to end at all?

What if someone could make grown up lullabies and treat them a bit like classical movements within a single bigger 38 minute lullaby?

Well, it wouldn’t be a lullaby then, would it?

But what if, after all that mutation to account for our messier more complicated adult lives and all that increased sophistication to feed our more nuanced brains, what if it still sounded like a lullaby because it still cocooned you in warmth and humanity and it was, despite the accumulated scars, still about and stood above all else on the side of love.

Well, in that case you’d have created Hats by The Blue Nile.

9/10.

Very good take on this album. Kudos to you, sir.

 

[RobMCFC]

It's always good when an album comes up that you haven't heard for a while and makes you re-evaluate.
Of course that can be an issue if upon listening it's not as good as you remember.
No such worry with this one.

This is how someone else described this so I'm using it as I probably wouldn't be able to articulate myself as well

The ultimate urban album of someone wandering the rainy streets under skyscrapers with yellow panel lights and walking under mirror puddles between taxi's with blurred red tail lights past clubs and bars with glaring neon lights.
Past strangers who's eyes never meet on their way on their nocturnal routes to someplace out of the view around corners dampened in shadows and dim lights.

That's the feeling it's evokes in me.
Scores. In my own collection it's an easy 8 and against other albums in the thread it's a 9 so I'll split the difference and say 8.5.

Looking to put your score in the spreadsheet, I was amazed to find that this is your first score. Is that right? (or am I losing my touch!)

 

[Out on blue 6]

Looking to put your score in the spreadsheet, I was amazed to find that this is your first score. Is that right? (or am I losing my touch!)

Yes it is. I shall endeavour to score more often

 

[RobMCFC]

Yes it is. I shall endeavour to score more often

No problem - I was just worried that I'd missed some scores. I had to ask threespires if I'd missed his score for last week, which I had, but it got put in before the final tally (before anybody gets the pitchforks out!)

 

[threespires]

Bloody hell mate. That review alone made my return to this thread 100% worthwhile. When I put this album up for review I didn't think many would like it never mind connect with it emotionally as you have. Have you always liked the band?

I've owned this since it's release, and though I liked it, it didn't strike me as quite at the level of the rave reviews it received and arguably similar to Bimbo's comment I liked A Walk Across the Rooftops more. But within a year of two I'd shifted to a place that I thought this was just a truly fantastic piece of music.

I'll post again on it before the week is out but in the car on the way into work this morning I was musing on how I would try and best sum up how I felt about this album and that was what came to me.

Edit: I've just checked and we briefly discussed this album when Bimbo nominated Talk Talk's Colour of Spring.



Clearly I'd decided that it wouldn't go down well but I'm glad you had no such qualms. I still think they'll be some for whom it won't hit the spot but it's great to see it being appreciated by some already.

There's a couple of regulars whose view of this I'll be really interested in too so all in all a fantastic pick imo.

 

[Saddleworth2]

I've owned this since it's release, and though I liked it, it didn't strike me as quite at the level of the rave reviews it received and arguably similar to Bimbo's comment I liked A Walk Across the Rooftops more. But within a year of two I'd shifted to a place that I thought this was just a truly fantastic piece of music.

I'll post again on it before the week is out but in the car on the way into work this morning I was musing on how I would try and best sum up how I felt about this album and that was what came to me.

Edit: I've just checked and we briefly discussed this album when Bimbo nominated Talk Talk's Colour of Spring.

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Clearly I'd decided that it wouldn't go down well but I'm glad you had no such qualms. I still think they'll be some for whom it won't hit the spot but it's great to see it being appreciated by some already.

There's a couple of regulars whose view of this I'll be really interested in too so all in all a fantastic pick imo.

Lordy, I had forgotten that exchange completely. The lullaby aspect is not one that had occurred to me before but it's very apt.

 

[BlueHammer85]

This album has come at the right time.
Out of the England wind up threads and having a nice stroll round a lake to nurse the hangover - feeling rather calm

 

[RobMCFC]

This album has come at the right time.
Out of the England wind up threads and having a nice stroll round a lake to nurse the hangover - feeling rather calm

I'm going to a hotel in Spain this weekend - it's likely to have a lot of Brits and a lot of Spaniards there. I wonder what the atmosphere will be like on Sunday night.

Especially as we know that, except in exceptional circumstances, teams with Rodri in don't lose :)

 

[BlueHammer85]

I'm going to a hotel in Spain this weekend - it's likely to have a lot of Brits and a lot of Spaniards there. I wonder what the atmosphere will be like on Sunday night.

Especially as we know that, except in exceptional circumstances, teams with Rodri in don't lose :)

Blimey, You timed that right!
They like to party the Spanish.
I’d be hiding in the hotel room, crying and listening to Blue Nile if I was you over there and we lose.