New Morning by Bob Dylan
A Review by Reginald Thornberry III
Professional Destroyer of Dreams
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Published in: The Discriminating Ear Quarterly, Winter 1970
Oh, how the mighty have stumbled. And stumbled. And face-planted directly into a vat of treacle.
Bob Dylan's New Morning arrives like an unwanted houseguest—cheerful, optimistic, and utterly lacking in self-awareness. After the spectacular trainwreck of Self Portrait (which I had the distinct pleasure of eviscerating mere months ago), one might have hoped Mr. Dylan would emerge chastened, perhaps even hungry to reclaim whatever tattered shreds of credibility remained. Instead, we receive this: a collection of songs so determinedly pleasant, so aggressively wholesome, that one wonders if Dylan hasn't suffered a severe blow to the head.
Gone is the sneer, the bite, the caustic brilliance that made Dylan insufferable in precisely the right ways. In its place? A man who appears to have discovered domestic bliss and, in his infinite wisdom, decided we should all hear about it. The title track opens with jaunty piano that sounds like it was composed for a children's television program about shapes. "Can't you hear that rooster crowin'?" Dylan bleats with the enthusiasm of someone who has just discovered the concept of morning. Yes, Bob, we can hear it. Some of us wish we couldn't.
"If Not For You" is particularly offensive—a love song so saccharine that even the Hallmark corporation would have rejected it for being too maudlin. Dylan sings about how terrible life would be without his beloved with all the poetic sophistication of a teenager's first diary entry. This is the same man who once wrote "Like a Rolling Stone." The fall from grace isn't just precipitous; it's positively Icarian.
The production is workmanlike at best, pedestrian at worst. Where one might expect innovation, experimentation, or even basic competence, we receive instead the sonic equivalent of beige wallpaper. The arrangements are so safe they should come with child-proof caps. Even Dylan's harmonica playing—once a raw, piercing element of genuine interest—sounds neutered, domesticated, declawed.
"Sign on the Window" commits the unforgivable sin of being wistful. Dylan, apparently, dreams of having children and building cabins. How... quaint. How thoroughly, devastatingly ordinary. The man who once channeled Rimbaud and howled at the machinery of modernity now yearns for the life of a particularly boring frontiersman.
I will concede—and this physically pains me—that "The Man in Me" possesses a certain ramshackle charm, though this may simply be Stockholm syndrome setting in after forty minutes of aggressive mediocrity. And "Father of Night" at least attempts something resembling ambition, even if it lands somewhere between a failed hymn and a successful sedative.
But these minor moments of competence only serve to highlight the album's greater failure: this is the work of an artist in full retreat. Dylan has looked at the chaos of the late 1960s, at the political upheaval and cultural revolution swirling around him, and decided to... write songs about roosters and domestic bliss. It's not just disappointing; it's cowardly.
The tragedy of New Morning is not that it's aggressively terrible—that would at least be interesting. No, the tragedy is that it's nice. It's pleasant. It's the musical equivalent of oatmeal: bland, beige, and utterly forgettable. For an artist of Dylan's capabilities, this represents a far greater sin than simple incompetence.
One imagines Dylan sitting in Woodstock, surveying his comfortable life, and thinking, "Yes, this is what the people need right now—songs about contentment." Meanwhile, the world burns, Nixon schemes, and Dylan tinkles away at his piano like a man who has confused apathy for enlightenment.
Final Verdict: A disappointment wrapped in false cheer and tied with a bow of unearned optimism. New Morning suggests Dylan has nothing left to say and, worse still, doesn't realize it.
I give it two stars instead of one solely because I'm saving that particularly withering rating for whatever abomination Dylan releases next. Mark my words: this is a man in artistic freefall, and we haven't yet seen him hit bottom.
My wine pairing recommendation: A 1962 Château Margaux, so you can at least enjoy something with depth and complexity while suffering through this auditory pablum.
Reginald Thornberry III is the chief music critic for The Discriminating Ear Quarterly and author of the forthcoming Everyone Else Is Wrong: A Life in Superior Taste.
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