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03/04/2006
Desire: encore, encore
Desire? For those smitten by Dylan’s greatness in the mid-‘60s, and subsequently disappointed, Desire marked the summit of a second high peak. A fecund period of sustained creativity saw two studio masterpieces, Planet Waves and Blood On The Tracks, as well as a pair of very different, under-rated live sets, Before The Flood and Hard Rain. And Desire.
This was Dylan’s middle period renaissance. Past the tumultuous first flush of youth, he was now exploring themes of early maturity – tangled, complex relationships, family responsibilities and the like.
Desire is as rich as much of the 1960s work. As well as a new musicality and some of Dylan’s best singing, it has beautifully executed filmic narratives (Isis, Mozambique), novel Tex-Mex-Latino explorations, and, in Hurricane, a renewed political engagement.
But Desire’s a bit of a mixed bag. While the first half of the album is superlative – prime Dylan - the second half is slightly anticlimactic. Joey is, rarely in the Dylan canon, morally repugnant, and Sara fulfils its soaring potential only fitfully.
Even after Dylan’s explosive mid-‘60s work, it had still been possible to see him as merely the best of a generation of talented rockers. But his mid-‘70s creative rebirth confirmed Dylan’s unique status: he was now, quite clearly, a genre all to himself.
Desire (1976)
Hurricane; Isis; Mozambique; One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below); Oh, Sister; Joey; Romance in Durango; Black Diamond Bay; Sara
Gerry Smith
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