Word: opus
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Mute as a stone, ambiguous as Tierasian, way out of focus, Bob Dylan unfolds like a playmets from Blonde on Blonde, his Opus 7. It is a double album, four sides, fourteen new songs. Sadly, a single disc could have distilled the four or five strong cuts scattered here, though the finest, "Sad Eyed Lady of the Low-lands," commands a full side to itself. The prophet has mined much slag this trip. This is not an entirely gratifying reward for Dylan devotees who have waited out his silence faithfully, the near year since last September's release of Highway...
...language that Bob Dylan is of interest to us, not for his melodies, not for his ideology. It may be hasty to speak of his language as "poetry." So far little that he has produced can stand by itself in print (except for intoned pieces like Opus 2's "Hard Rain), but needs his performance to make clear the stresses and quantities he intends. Only with these heard can one get a "poetic" sense of language opening through his songs, the exhilarating view of sound and sense stationed in strange surroundings. This is a trivial problem. Dylan's imagination...
gaining its interest from a doubling of the natural number of stresses those words demand. Earlier, in Opus 6's "Desolation Row," a typical fine lyric operated within the confines of natural speech rhythm and normal stress...
Side 3 of Blonde on Blonde bears a mother lode of vacuity, 4 of its 5 songs. "Temporary Like Achilles" adds some new verses to the great flop from Opus 6, "It Takes a Train to Cry," but it cuts out the yodel-like chorus that almost saved that earlier piece...
...three. Not only is the sport good for advertising bullion; the pirate stations have also become a symbol of the rebellion against the BBC, whose hoary morning Housewives' Choice is apt to consist of an Elvis Presley side, a Hawaiian number, a march, a Chris Barber moldy-fig opus-and, with luck, something as fresh as I Want to Hold Your Hand...