Shadow Kingdom
COLUMBIA/LEGACY
One might wonder why Bob Dylan, who has just turned 82, would still want to the lullaby he wrote for his eldest son Jesse that appeared on 1974's 'Planet Waves'. But intimations of mortality can provide a lease of life. Out of the blue in 2021, Dylan filmed a club gig in Santa Monica that was directed by Alma Har'el in a mythical bordello setting, an imaginary dive in Marseilles called Bon Bon Club where indifferent cowboy punters loom like ghosts from an Americannoir nightmare. That film is soon to be available on Apple TV, and two years later comes the inevitable soundtrack, an intriguing collection of familiar classics from 1965 onwards. Lyrics are updated, arrangements played fast and loose. The mid-tempo viewed as writer's block overcome, is an evident highlight in a set that casts a smoky haze over a remarkable event where characters from the shadow kingdom of Dylan's past come out to play one more time.
