Bob Dylan’s Shadow Kingdom: Review
Alex Perez
Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour, which began in the late ’80s during the bard’s creative down years, was halted when the pandemic hit. Dylan might’ve been forced to stop rambling, but he would not stop creating. He set up shop in Santa Monica, and, over the course of seven days in 2021, with the help of filmmaker Alma Har’el, Shadow Kingdom was conjured up. Shadow Kingdom, a concert film shot in black and white, in which Dylan rearranges 13 of his classic songs, premiered on veeps.com with little publicity. It was a strange and beautiful performance, the musical shadow known as Bob Dylan blessing his fans with an unforeseen gift during those awful pandemic days. He disappeared as quickly as he’d appeared, leaving behind the only thing that’s ever mattered to him: the songs. Two years later, the Shadow Kingdom recording has been released as Dylan’s 40th studio album.
Shadow Kingdom, consisting of selections from Dylan’s early to mid-career work, will please aficionados and newcomers alike. It’s an accessible record for those new to Dylan while offering Dylanologists new textures and lyrical wrinkles to obsess over. Unlike Dylan’s rollicking late-career blues recordings, it’s devoid of percussion, and the backing band isn’t dragging Dylan along but gliding alongside. This is Dylan in Sinatra crooner mode with the occasional blues growl to spice things up.
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Dylan figured out years ago that the key to his perpetual reinvigoration was the rearranging of his songbook. The songs, even the great classics, are never finished. He’s searching for the perfect version, as are his fans, and the magic happens on the journey to that unattainable perfection. Will this chord change or this lyrical tweak get us there? On Shadow Kingdom, three classics are perfected — for now, of course. “Forever Young,” a release from 1974’s Planet Waves, is reimagined as an old man’s lament. The song can get lost in the Dylan catalog due to its ubiquity, but the minimalist production, featuring a mandolin and Dylan’s effortlessly melancholic delivery, transforms it into a late-career classic. Like the best Dylan songs, it’s plain, simple, and true.
“Queen Jane Approximately,” another of Dylan’s early classics, is reimagined into a classic yet again on Shadow Kingdom. Dylan’s vocal delivery on this new version of “Jane” imbues the song with a lovelornness far more potent than that of the original. Many of Dylan’s early love songs pre-Blood on the Tracks are tinged with that playful and sometimes vitriolic Dylan wit. But he’s too old and too wise for that now. The precociousness of the young Dylan is long gone, so a line like, “And you want somebody you don’t have to speak to, won’t you come see me, Queen Jane,” cold-cocks you with its simplicity and its implications. Isn’t that what we all want? Someone who doesn’t have to speak to you, and you don’t have to speak to them — that sweet, silent understanding with your chosen king or queen.
My favorite Dylan line, from his modern classic, “Mississippi,” goes like this: “You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.” It’s a perfect Dylan line, its instantaneous meaning and non-meaning co-mingling. If that line hits you like it hits me, it’s because you know exactly what it means on a spiritual level. That lyric from “Mississippi” is the through line that connects Shadow Kingdom, but with a slight wrinkle: You can’t come back all the way, but you can come back in a different way. It’s in that search for a “different way” that the masterpiece can materialize, as is the case with the aptly named “When I Paint My Masterpiece.” A Dylan fan favorite, covered by the likes of The Band and the Grateful Dead, “When I Paint My Masterpiece” has always been a funky little tune, with lines like “got me a date with Botticelli’s niece.” But now Dylan leans even harder into the ridiculousness and reclaims the song from the cover artists. It’s a groovier version, the band swinging and Dylan over-enunciating at times. At the end, when he delivers the crackling “someday everything is going to be beautiful, when I paint my masterpiece,” you think: Yup, there it is, old boy. A perfect rendition of a perfect song. For now.
The time off from the constant touring also served Dylan well, as he sounds better than he has in years. His delivery is smooth, and he doesn’t lean too heavily on the growl, employing it only when a song calls for it. “Tombstone Blues” is completely reworked here, devoid of that infamous “thin wild mercury sound” Dylan favored in the ’60s, and the result is a meditative hymn. I’ve never been a huge fan of the amphetamine-driven manic quality of the original “Tombstone Blues,” but I can now include the Shadow Kingdom version into my Dylan playlist. The song sounds like an outtake from the Oh Mercy or Time Out of Mind sessions, which just so happen to be two of my favorite Dylan records.
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Another reworked, often overlooked song, “What Was It You Wanted,” from Oh Mercy is stripped of producer Daniel Lanois’s atmospherics and overdubbing, and it is far stronger and darker for it. “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)” isn’t overhauled but simply given a new coat of paint. It’s still the catchy tune you remember, but now it’s sung by old man Dylan. It’s a perfect dichotomy.
There’s something for everyone in Shadow Kingdom, which makes it a perfect rocking chair or late-night driving record. In the past, I’ve recommended The Essential Bob Dylan or Blood on the Tracks to Dylan newbies, but Shadow Kingdom, spanning 20 years of work and stylistically accessible, might become my go-to recommendation. Dylan’s in his 80s now, having recently turned 83. Let’s hope that he keeps on keeping on and stepping out from shadows on occasion to reshuffle his musical deck.
Alex Perez is a fiction writer and cultural critic from Miami. Follow him on Twitter: @Perez_Writes