Review- The New Basement Tapes: Lost on the River

I have always been quite interested in archival projects of this nature. For those who are unaware, this album is the culmination of various artists teaming up to bring life to song lyrics written by Bob Dylan circa the Basement Tapes era. Not only was this an extremely productive time for Dylan, it was also the period of time in which his backing band, the Hawks, became the Band, playing many songs from the Basement Tapes sessions on their debut. These sessions have always been surrounded in mystery, and this project may shed some light on Bob Dylan's life as a recluse during that period.

It's hard to talk about this project without Woody Guthrie coming into the conversation. Bob was no doubt influenced by Guthrie, and even visited him many times in the hospital near the end of his life, citing him as a musical hero. It's interesting to note this, since Guthrie's lyrics have also gotten this treatment a few times, with Mermaid Avenue and New Multitudes. Jim James is actually a veteran of the latter project, and lends his talents here as well.

I was judging this album on two criteria: the strength of the Bob Dylan lyrics, and then the music that was written by the group to accompany the lyrics. And I got the same impression from both criteria: it really depends on the song. The songs are relatively hit or miss, with brief flashes of brilliance hidden within some definite filler. One can easily see why some of these lyrics were discarded, while some were confusingly never put to music. The music written for this album was done individually, with the group then coming together and selecting the best from that larger lot of songs. As a result, there is some variety to the songs, as each artist has a different approach (my personal favorites are tunes written by Elvis Costello, due to his compositions sounding a little Dylan-esque, and by Jim James because I'm a drooling My Morning Jacket fan). This variety is a strength of the album, as well as one of it's greatest weaknesses. The variety makes sure that the product is not monotonous, but the variety also allows there to be experiments that takes some wrong turns.

All in all, I thought this was an interesting project, but not likely one I'll revisit too often. With other projects resulting from this song writing period (Music from Big Pink, The Basement Tapes, as well as the new 6 disc bootleg series release from Dylan), this is definitely one of the weaker ones, so if you're interested in this period of Bob Dylan's writing, I'd probably go to those spots first. This is more a project for the musicians themselves, and for the most die hard Dylan fanatics.

Out of a total of five stars, I give this:

What did you think of the album? Are there any projects you think I should look at, or any you are particularly passionate about? I'm off to continue my listen of Sonic Highways.

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