Sometimes the random process I use to select these CDs works against me--I wrote about Bringing It All Back Home just a week ago, & it would have been more natural for this one to come 1st, since it's clear how Another Side of Bob Dylan laid the groundwork for its successor. As I pointed out in the other piece, songs like "Chimes of Freedom" & "My Back Pages" set the table for "Gates of Eden"; & "Motorpsycho Nitemare" is the blueprint, both melodic & topical, for "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream." More generally, this is the album where his writing starts to become less direct, more surreal, less overtly "topical." Musically, you can hear him straining to leave his simple acoustic accompaniment behind, whether it's the piano of "Black Crow Blues" or the busy lead-ish guitar figures of "Spanish Harlem Incident." I used to think of Bringing It All Back Home as a transitional album, but after fresh listens I consider it a much-refined version of Another Side. Although there are a few gems in here, unengaging centerpiece songs on each side of the record, & an overall unfinished feel, conspire to bring this album down.
Dylan might have felt like he was outgrowing the solo guitar & harmonica format of his first 4 albums, but he certainly takes advantage of it here to play loose with tempo, phrasing & chord progressions. Recordings like "Chimes of Freedom," "My Back Pages," "Ballad in Plain D" & others sound like 1st takes with their warts & all approaches to arrangement. With "My Back Pages" in particular, I'm not sure that any 2 verses are played with the same chord progression. There's a certain creative restlessness evident in these performances, like he couldn't wait to dash these songs off & get to the next thing. Sometimes this type of approach captures excitement or authenticity--here it just comes off kind of slapdash.
As a kid, I loved the "funny" songs on here, like "Motorpsycho Nitemare" & "I Shall Be Free No. 10." Both are satires of mainstream America's response to the counterculture, while not being particularly flattering to the latter. Today, I still find the former song sharp & witty (it's basically a shaggy dog story that mixes the "farmer's daughter" joke setup with the plot of the film Psycho & a splash of '60s generation gap), but "I Shall Be Free No. 10" is mostly a directionless throwaway. I'm sad to say the same for "Spanish Harlem Incident," a song where I really enjoy the melody & guitar work, but the lyrics do little more than exotify a "gypsy" woman (even making reference to his own "pale face") & make an awkward stab at capturing the whirling thrill of infatuation & early romance, a topic he would later write about masterfully.
Speaking of the weird way Dylan writes about women: "Ballad in Plain D," everyone! The 1 song that Dylan himself admits he shouldn't have written, it demonstrates all of Dylan's worst habits when it comes to depicting women: that peculiar intersection of idealizing, infantilizing, & dismissing. The song is also too long, too self-serious, & shakily performed. I feel the same way about the album's other long song, "Chimes of Freedom." I kinda get what he's going for & appreciate the awestruck poetry of the storm, but I can't listen to that song without zoning out & losing the thread of Dylan's ponderous verses. "My Back Pages" is better--I've always loved the oxymoronic chorus--& I understand his chafing at people's expectations of him as the voice of a generation, & it's entirely his right to decide that writing straightforward protest songs satisfies neither his artistic ambitions nor his soul, but when he apologizes for denouncing bigots & "Fearing not that I’d become my enemy in the instant that I preach," it sounds a bit too much like the mavens of respectability politics who claim there's no difference between fascists & antifascists.
On the closing songs of both sides, though, Dylan gets everything right. "To Ramona" is a gentle love song that's really more about compassion--the sometimes unglamorous part of romance that doesn't get as many songs written about it. In a soft voice over his waltzing guitar, he starts out trying to give advice, but soon concludes that "deep in my heart I know there's no help I can bring." His job isn't to fix her, it's simply to be there, simply to listen, because he knows that one day he'll need her to do the same for him. Another song about maturity in relationships, though less positive, is "It Ain't Me Babe." In it, Dylan ends a relationship not because of anything sour, but because he lovingly but firmly refuses to be something he is not. It's a song about setting boundaries, about not allowing your lover's problems to subsume you, & it's the kind of mature breakup song that, again, we need more of.
Romantic love is the topic for 7 of this album's 11 songs, a high percentage relative to the average Dylan record. A few songs do a spectacular job at picking apart romance's peculiarities, a few are mediocre, & there are 2 total whiffs--which are not good stats by the standards of this era of Dylan. Handful of classics aside, Another Side is the least essential of Bob Dylan's 1st 9 releases.
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