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Shadow Kingdom

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Shadow Kingdom consists of new recordings of 13 songs from the first half of Dylan's career plus a new instrumental song titled "Sierra's Theme". Shadow Kingdom nonetheless earned rave reviews from critics, many of whom praised Dylan's creative re-arrangements of his early songs as well as Har'el's imaginative staging of the performances. Tim Cumming, writing at The Arts Desk, noted that the "best song performances – " Queen Jane Approximately", " Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and " Tombstone Blues" from Highway 61, a poignant " Forever Young" and a killer version of "What Was it you Wanted", one I may never hear bettered – make this required listening when it comes to later-period Bob, a rare look back in studio conditions, and from a high point in his career".

And what the subtitle described as ‘The Early Songs Of Bob Dylan’, reconfigured without drums to complement the liminal atmosphere of director Alma Har’el’s visuals.Shadow Kingdom the album, then, turns out to be an extremely useful addition to the Dylan catalogue, and very much of a piece with his current manoeuvres. I was umming and ahing whether to get "Shadow Kingdom", but I certainly glad I did, as with Paul Simon’s “Seven Psalms”, if this is going to be his nibs final album, he’s going out big. Dylan has long treated his songs as standards, so compositionally robust as to be infinitely malleable, but the gravitas here is striking; as if the removal of the beats has removed the song from linear time. Some viewers expected the event to be a live concert and were surprised when it turned out to be a stylized black-and-white art film featuring "pre-recorded set pieces" instead. The album's cover photograph is a black-and-white still image of Bob Dylan playing the harmonica taken from the film Shadow Kingdom: The Early Songs of Bob Dylan, directed by Alma Har'el and shot by Lol Crawley.

Think of it as a companion to Rough And Rowdy Ways, and that album’s ongoing tour: as if Dylan were reinventing those ‘Early Songs’ in the same silvery light, and getting them out of the way before he hits the road again to concentrate on his Latest Songs. A review by Scott Bauer of the Associated Press praised the arrangements, noting how the "heavy dose of accordion and no drums" make the songs "sound fresh again". Une forme d'épuration grâce à un retour à une orchestration très acoustique, de la musique sans rajout, le tout très intimiste. Originally reinterpreted for an exclusive streaming film event, which aired in July 2021, Shadow Kingdom will now be available on vinyl, CD, and streaming platforms for the first time.Tombstone Blues, slowed to a spectral recitation, sounds like it was written the same day as Murder Most Foul, but a day that’s hard to place in either 2020 or 1965.

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