Album rating: 2.0I hope you like this review. I realize that a lot of Dylan fans see him better than I do. Album rating: 2.0I`m not a fanatical fan, but I really have a lot of time for this guy and his production. His LPs from the late 70s were usually all pretty mediocre and that`s no exception, it`s like he doesn`t mean a single word (or note). 2 is just right, even if it seems strange under a Dylan album. Concise review :thumb: In addition to the bad reviews, the audience was also unmoved and Street-Legal broke a three-album run with number one hits. Dylan would not reach these heights again until nearly 30 years later with Modern Times in 2006. Part of the negative answer here may be due to the fact that the so-called World Tour had not yet landed in America. While there may have been reports of what he was doing, the Sonics, especially Douglas` sometimes blatant backing vocals and saxophone, would have been completely unknown. Maybe the reviews and sales would have been better if our ears had been better prepared, or it could have been simply due to the album`s intrinsic flaws. But we have the 20/20 advantage in hindsight, not to mention what happened to Dylan next – being “born again” and writing some of the best gospel songs of the second half of the 20th century – so we can listen to Street Legal with a more complete setting.
Album rating: 3.0There are good moments The key is not to stick this to Dylan 64-67 and you will love it. There is a juxtaposition that builds this production with the lyrics. “We Better Talk This Over” retains the biting spirit of “New Pony,” with a story clearly inspired by the end of a relationship. “Where Are You Tonight?” plays like a simple epic, all gospel and just rock `n` roll forgets to conclude the album, but the words paint these scenes alive, surreal and literally side by side, as the song`s narrator stumbles through the stages and streets, searching for the one who isn`t there. Like the best of Dylan`s work, it`s both overwhelming and inspiring. This is a miracle that should be highlighted in any best-of compilation. Another issue preventing Street-Legal from growing is the production of “Captain In Charge” Don DeVito, who lacks the warmth and depth of his excellent work on Desire. Even a remix in 1999 could not eliminate the feeling that the album was underproduced despite the high musical quality.
The end result adds up to an album that almost requires mixed reviews, with the first five songs getting three out of five stars and the other four, for a solid 3.5. Because street legal is a bad case – that`s the idea. Some contemporary reviews that are still available have a few words for the album: “too ripe”, “turgid”, “miserable”. These evaluations grow from the legs, and they go through the years, and at one point I bought a CD, listened to it several times, tore it digitally, and forgot it in a sea of files. Despite the arrangements worked out by the big band, it`s almost as if Dylan treats studio time as a pit stop, a place where songs can be quickly recorded on tape without worrying too much about posterity. Theoretically, the songs themselves could exist outside of the album, either in live versions of Dylan or in recordings of other people. But fans and critics didn`t think so when the album was released six weeks later. It was the NEW DYLAN and expectations were high, perhaps higher than usual due to the disappointed reaction to Hard Rain, the glowing live album that was his last official release.
These reviews were like love letters compared to many of the early reactions to Street-Legal, some of which were only slightly friendlier than Greil Marcus` infamous “What is this?” reaction to 1970`s Self Portrait. Marcus himself hated it and another example of selection came from Robert Christgau, the “dean of American rock criticism”, who gave the album a C+ and called it a “terrible product”. Some critics in the UK saw it differently, Michael Watts of Melody Maker even called it “Dylan`s best album since John Wesley Harding”. While I have a hard time connecting to this review because I like Street Legal, it is at least thorough and well thought out, from the perspective of the reviewer who wrote this. For me, this record completes the great trilogy of the seventies in a depraved and depraved way and at the same time too smooth for itself, but Dylan`s genius shines just as well and makes it one of his greatest lyrical ways and in terms of singing, if you can lift the veil of bad production, Which is easier, if you listen to the remix. The band struggles at times, because of the hasty recordings and the big band, but I can hear the thin wild sound of Blonde on Blonde, which has been brought to a new place, that of Elvis in Memphis. How can it be said that The Changing of the Guard doesn`t make sense, doesn`t deal too much with mythology, tarot and symbolism, it`s a kind of autobiography, and Where you Tonight stands proudly on the back of Like a Rolling Stone and Memphis Blues Again, breaking my heart every time I hear it, He could have just kept that wisdom instead of falling into the trap of the one-dimensional slow train to come. whose title track is at least funky and the last song has real gospel, but the rest. I`d better shut up). New Pony is one of his best blues songs, better than Modern Times derivatives (an album with very good songs like Ain`t Talkin`, Working Man`s Blues, Nettie Moore, Spirit on the Water, Beyond here lies Nothing and Thunder on the Mountain, which could have made a good Elpee without the fountain pen). For the rest, I agree with the opinions expressed here, although I see nothing wrong with No Time to Think, which swings and is pure literature, no wonder that after the flack he received for this very intellectual but very visceral album, he stopped writing real poetry for a while. Super critical.
I still have my original LP and I`ve played it day in and day out. I loved it. The whole album had a big theme, and the story of each song was a journey on a journey that I could never understand why it had pivoted at the time. Again, Bob was beyond criticism. Album rating: 3.5Quite simply, I love Dylan, all Dylan. I agree that this album is not his best, but it`s still one of my favorites. Sometimes bad reviews of this album make me think, it`s 1965 and Highway 61 again and again, there is not so much a change of style, but an experiment with a style in this album. While it doesn`t stand out for many as one of the best in Dylan`s catalog, it certainly has to stand out as a Brave album and as a “new” album. Changing of the Guard and Seã±or are truly fantastic tracks, Baby Stop crying and Is your Love in vain, are musically perhaps the best of the rest of the songs, but lyrically they give a glimpse that goes deeper into who Dylan was at the time than any of his interviews. It doesn`t stand out to me as one of his best, but it`s far from his worst album.
It also shows that Dylan is a true artist, instead of painting the same kind of scenes over and over again in the same brush style, he tried a sculpture of ideas that he rarely approached in the most famous works, and if he never gets applause for the album as a piece of music, he must be praised for bravery, Go somewhere else. And there is a shame. For some reason, I haven`t enjoyed it in years, because it`s one of Dylan`s most sonorous albums to those ears, at least sonorically. Achieving this lush, spector-like sound led him to a similar goal to Bruce Springsteen in Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River. Even “Changing of the Guards” has a saxophone chorus very similar to Clarence Clemons`. If there`s no way to set a series of songs or poems to music, there`s no reason why it shouldn`t be with a lot of people in the room, just like it could be with a man and an acoustic guitar. It`s all a question of whether it`s done well or not, or at least tastefully. Starting from the introspection of Blood on the Tracks, then relying on the frenzied sounds of the Rolling Thunder Revue, with this clever sound palace in Desire, then first testing the swing big band of the extended line-up during his tour of Japan in 1978, he landed here.