"Bob Dylan - Street Legal"

To say that I was apprehensive when I picked up Street Legal is to be very, very honest. Now, anyone who knows me knows I listen to way more Dylan than is really healthy anyway, but even Dylan fans know there are some Dylan albums that just aren't really worth bothering with (anything between Street Legal and Infidels, actually, and even those two albums are acquired tastes rather than heralded classics).

To say, then, that I was pleasantly surprised with be very true. I didn't expect it to be as good as it was, though I do qualify that statement by saying the album does have flaws, and it's not for just anyone.

In a lot of ways, Street Legal reminds me of the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street. Both attempt to explore and examine the various forms of American music, and both feature prominent horns and keyboard arrangements. But where the sprawling Exile takes each genre or style separately, Street Legal blends the various disparate threads of American music and synthesizes a new style. In a way, Dylan's album is something of a stylistic exercise, an effort to explore a new sound. In that regard, it is an excellent album. The musicianship is top notch and tight, with just enough rough edges left in the mix to keep the music from sounding sterile. Tunes like "Changing of the Guards" and "Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)" have an excellent feel and sound to them, and "New Pony" has a sleazy grind to it that you can't help but groove to.

Vocally, Dylan offers a uniformly excellent performance, sounding genuine and natural in his efforts. His voice not only sounds natural, it sounds downright decent, an impressive feat for the raspy singer. The addition of female backup singers strengthens Dylan's vocals in places, filling in the gaps left by his ragged voice, but sometimes the backup singers become a little annoying, as in "New Pony."

The place where the album falls short is in the lyrics. Even as much as I like tunes like "Changing of the Guards," there's a spark lacking from the lyrics that's quite noticeable. The rhymes seem forced and weak, and the stream-of-consciousness turns of phrase seem unnatural and artificial. It's as though Dylan were doing an imitation of Dylan, and while it's a good imitation, it's nothing like the real master. Dylan was struggling to come up with compelling lyrical material, and that shows. His words here are nowhere near his peak mid-'60s work, or even approaching his excellent albums from only a few years prior (Blood on the Tracks and Desire, the latter coming out only two years earlier than Street Legal).

Even with the lyrical shortcomings, Street Legal is still an entertaining and worthwhile album. It is neither as revelatory as his early work nor as compelling, but from a purely aesthetic point of view, it's a solid effort. Street Legal did not have the sterility that much of Dylan's '80s work would, nor did it have the energy and vigor of his early albums. Street Legal falls somewhere between the two extremes, and is notable for being not quite so notable.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Bob Dylan, "Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)"