eMusic Review
After seven years of songwriting silence, Dylan surprised everyone by returning in full glory if "glory" is the right word for songs as doomy as these — and won an Album of the Year Grammy. He'd also finally figured out how to make the ragged husk of his youthful voice dramatically and musically effective. "I'm sick of love," he declares at the outset, and the love that he suggests is already slipping from his memory's trembling clutch is his only consolation here against the ravages of sickness and age. Death hovers around the margins of most of these songs, underscored by Daniel Lanois 'spooky production. Dylan's persona is half a ghost already, and his longest song ever, "Highlands," is almost pure desolation, a Samuel Beckett-ish voice talking to itself, trying and failing to interact with the world around it.
