(COLUMBIA RECORDS; 2015)
Well, you may have thought you had heard everything but, now, on his new album, SHADOWS IN THE NIGHT, we have Bob Dylan singing from the Frank Sinatra songbook. The record is not only a tribute to the Chairman of the Board, but also to that great American songbook of standards, tunes popular before rock ‘n’ roll took over the airwaves. The real surprise here is that the Zimm pulls it off pretty well; what he does is called “interpreting the song” and he sings them better than you would expect. Backed minimally by his band, Tony Garnier on bass, guitarists Charlie Sexton and Stu Kimball, Donny Herron playing a wonderful pedal steel guitar throughout and George C Receli on percussion, with an additional horn section.
Dylan and the sparse band do not try to make the old songs swing; they play them straight, which gives Bob room to sing them as only he can. Frank Sinatra himself wrote the first track (with Jack Wolf and Joel Herron), “I’m a Fool To Want You,” but performed all the others throughout his legendary career, “Autumn Leaves,” “Some Enchanted Evening,” “Full Moon and Empty Arms” and, my personal favorite, “That Lucky Old Sun” which closes the album. I won’t take the time here to go over Bob Dylan’s resume as one of the most influential artists in pop, rock and folk music. Let’s just say that after five decades in the business, that he is still capable of surprising us by attempting this kind of album – much less pulling it off – is not really that surprising at all.