DYLAN, BOB

The successor, of course, to Bob Dylan's original Greatest Hits collection, More Greatest Hits is remarkable on so many different levels that it remains one of the crucial compilations in his catalog, no matter how many other, bigger and brighter collections have been unleashed in the years since then. For starters, it brought half an album's worth of unheard performances onto the market, beginning with a beautiful 1964 live version of "Tomorrow Is a Long Time." There was a glimpse into the Basement Tapes, while recent recordings "Down in the Flood," "I Shall Be Released," "When I Paint My Masterpiece" and "You Ain't Going Nowhere" proved that whatever else Dylan had been doing in recent months, planning follow-ups to such abominations as Self Portrait and New Morning were not among them. This is the sound of Dylan fighting back with a vengeance, a precursor of the rage and beauty that would bleed through Planet Waves and Blood on the Tracks, with added political resonance. Elsewhere, too, More Greatest Hits dances on the angrier side of the muse. picking up on album tracks that the earlier compilation necessarily overlooked ("Hard Rain," "Don't Think Twice," "Stuck Inside of Mobile," "Maggie's Farm," and imbibing them with fresh resonance simply through doing so. Four bona fide hit singles include the caustic "Positively Fourth Street" and the resigned "Watching the River Flow," alongside "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You" and the predictable (and easily ignored) "Lay Lady Lay." Three further hits are familiar from other artists' efforts -- "All Along the Watchtower," "If Not for You" and the Basement Tapes' "Mighty Quinn." But it's not the ease with which this collection lives up to its title that matters. It's the fact that, for the first time since Blonde on Blonde, a new Dylan album actually sounds like Dylan ought to. ~ Dave Thompson, AMG

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