Bob Dylan Shadow Kingdom: The Early Songs of Bob Dylan

I recall when Shadow Kingdom was marketed as a pay-per-view livestream concert* during the Covid lockdown, I was wary and passed. I felt validated passing after the airing, when I learned it was not a live concert but a stylized black-and-white art film featuring the songs in pre-recorded set pieces. I missed the part where critics raved about Dylan’s creative re-arrangements of his early songs. Now comes the LP version of Shadow Kingdom, and it is WOW!

Shadow Kingdom is late period Bob reflecting on some of his songs from the 60s (with one oddball from 1989 and a new song of incidental music used on the movie end-credits). His method is to dramatically rearrange the songs. The arrangements are daring but completely in the context of what he has been doing live the last decade or so. The song selections are very cool – deep cuts – not the obvious “greatest hits. It is a brilliantly inspired playlist. Here is the tracklist:

When I Paint My Masterpiece
Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)
Queen Jane Approximately
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues
Tombstone Blues
To Be Alone with You
What Was It You Wanted
Forever Young
Pledging My Time
The Wicked Messenger
Watching the River Flow
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
Sierra’s Theme (a new song that is an instrumental that was used for end credits in the concert film)

Dylan comes across as playful and is known for reinventing his songs in concert, So it is not shocking to hear rearrangements here. In concerts those rearrangements can sound tossed off, here they come across as loving reconsiderations.

Vocally, Dylan sounds great. Dylan rehabbed his voice and tweaked his phrasing during the Sinatra trilogy (2015-2017). Shadow Kingdom is a direct beneficiary of that detour (as is Rough And Rowdy Ways and his current installment of the Never Ending Tour). The arrangements on Shadow Kingdom are generally slowed down, using the bluesy Americana of his late period and intriguingly without drums.

Sonically, this is an outstanding recording and Dylan’s voice is front and center. There is a nice clean separation so every instrument can be clearly heard. The accordion takes a prominent place in the arrangements. Overall this is a great-sounding album.

Personnel:

Bob Dylan – vocals, harmonica
Jeff Taylor – accordion
Greg Leisz – guitar, pedal steel guitar, mandolin
Tim Pierce – guitar
T-Bone Burnett – guitar
Ira Ingber – guitar
Don Was – upright bass
John Avila – electric bass
Doug Lacy – accordion
Steve Bartek – additional acoustic guitar

*2021 concert film featuring American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Directed by Israeli-American filmmaker Alma Har’el, it was shot on a soundstage in Santa Monica, California, over seven days in 2021 while Dylan was sidelined from his Never Ending Tour due to the COVID-19 pandemic.