Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine [-] If Blood on the Tracks was an unapologetically intimate affair, Desire is unwieldy and messy, the deliberate work of a collective. And while Bob Dylan directly addresses his crumbling relationship with his wife, Sara, on the final track, Desire is hardly as personal as its predecessor, finding Dylan returning to topical songwriting and folk tales for the core of the record. Its all over the map, as far as songwriting goes, and so is it musically, capturing Dylan at the beginning of the Rolling Thunder Revue era, which was more notable for its chaos than its music. And, so its only fitting that Desire fits that description as well, as it careens between surging folk-rock, Mideastern dirges, skipping pop, and epic narratives. Its little surprise that Desire doesnt quite gel, yet it retains its own character -- really, theres no other place where Dylan tried as many different styles, as many weird detours, as he does here. And, theres something to be said for its rambling, sprawling character, which has a charm of its own. Even so, the record would have been assisted by a more consistent set of songs; there are some masterpieces here, though: Hurricane is the best-known, but the effervescent Mozambique is Dylan at his breeziest, Sara at his most nakedly emotional, and Isis is one of his very best songs of the 70s, a hypnotic, contemporized spin on a classic fable. This may not add up to a masterpiece, but it does result in one of his most fascinating records of the 70s and 80s -- more intriguing, lyrically and musically, than most of his latter-day affairs.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 12:19:10 +0000
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