64.Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde (1966)

 

1. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
2. Pledging My Time
3. Visions Of Johanna
4. One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)
5. I Want You
6. Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
7. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
8. Just Like A Woman
9. Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)
10. Temporary Like Achilles
11. Absolutely Sweet Marie
12. Fourth Time Around
13. Obviously Five Believers
14. Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands

In which Bob Dylan goes beyond the impossible and records an album even better than Highway 61 Revisited. You know, the one I already gave a ten? It's like he shat out great songs during this period. This album represents the ultimate flourishing of his rock period, and was far too great to fit onto one album, so we have here the very first double album in rock history. It's characteristically filled with surreal imagery and historical characters swordfighting or whatever Dylan feels like going on about.

The album begins with 'Rainy Day Women #12 and 35', a booze-and-weed fueled party that happens to contain a song. It's such a joyously discordant track that I'm amazed that it managed to become a hit. From there, the album leaps from strength to strength in an astonishing 70 minutes. There's all sorts of moods and emotions conjured up by the bizarre imagery, as well as the skilled performances by the players on this album. Who woulda thought that a bunch of country session musicians could help make one of the all time great rock albums?

The more quiet tunes on the album, like 'Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' and 'Visions of Johanna' have this sort of atmosphere that I can't really put a finger on, but I'm pretty sure it's magic.You know, the stuff that makes magnets and rainbows work? Yeah, it works on Dylan songs too. And the lyrics are so great that I will not shut up about them for the entire review. Even 'I Want You', with its incredibly lazy chorus and catchy melody that's probably the closest this record comes to a pop song, drops shit like 'The guilty undertaker sighs, the lonely organ grinder cries, the silver saxophones say I should refuse you' in the first friggin' line. We've come a long way from 'I Want To Hold Your Hand'.


I could meticulously describe each of these songs in detail and really get into what makes them all masterpieces, but this album doesn't really need that. It's one of those masterpieces that doesn't really grip you as a masterpiece at first listen, but then eventually it creeps up on you and all of a sudden you've got more Dylan albums than you know what to do with. 10/10