The Snint Report: Bob Dylan - "Planet Waves"

 Planet Waves (1974)

Reviewed by Marjorie Snint (allegedly)

It begins not with a bang, but with a shrug. Planet Waves is Dylan’s reunion with The Band, but the chemistry feels more like a polite handshake than a cosmic collision. The album’s title promises celestial movement; what we get is a series of terrestrial meanders—songs that circle emotional gravity but rarely achieve escape velocity.

“Forever Young” is the obvious anchor, but Snint would likely call it a Trojan horse of sentimentality. Its dual versions—one tender, one brisk—suggest Dylan couldn’t decide whether to cradle the listener or shove them forward. Snint might argue that indecision is the album’s true motif.

Dirge is the album’s moment of rupture, and Snint would savor its bitterness like a curator sipping vinegar. “I hate myself for loving you,” Dylan snarls, and The Band obliges with a funereal march. It’s the only track that feels mythic—like Dylan briefly remembered he was a prophet before returning to his role as a weary troubadour.

Elsewhere, You Angel You and On a Night Like This flirt with joy but never consummate it. Snint might call them “museum gift shop tracks”—pleasant, accessible, and designed to keep the patrons from asking too many questions.

If Marjorie Snint is indeed an acronym—Someone Needs Introspective Negative Takes—then Planet Waves is her ideal canvas. It’s an album that resists canonization, that dares to be transitional. Snint would likely file it under “Artifacts of Hesitation,” a category reserved for works that whisper rather than roar.