Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks

TAS Rated 5/5 Music, 4.5/5 Sonics in the April 2013 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

Bob Dylan Blood on the Tracks on Numbered Limited Edition Hybrid SACD from Mobile Fidelity!

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time - Rated 16/500!

Presence, Immediacy, Naturalness, Realism in Spades: Mobile Fidelity Reissue Makes Blood on the Tracks Among Most Lifelike-Sounding Albums You’ll Ever Hear!

Dylan’s Masterpiece Break-Up Album: Sentimental Redemption Arises Amidst Sorrow, Turmoil, Sadness, and Pain. Songs Flow Like Rivers, Acoustic and Electric Elements Merge Like Bezels on a Diamond. Ranked 16 on Rolling Stone’s List of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Includes “Tangled Up In Blue,” “Simple Twist of Fate,” “Idiot Wind,” “Buckets of Rain”.

Bob Dylan was at several crossroads in the mid-1970s. Artistically, he was largely written off as being past his prime. Emotionally, he was suffering through a painful divorce from his then-wife Sara Lowndes. Creatively, he appeared at a stalemate, his previous decade’s unprecedented run of transformational brilliance finished. Then came Blood on the Tracks.

A start-to-finish cycle that documents a lover’s pursuit of, entanglement with, and loss of a woman, the bracingly intimate 1975 effort remains one of the most encompassing break-up albums ever made and ranks as the most personal statement of the Bard’s career. To hear it is to experience the agony, frustration, trauma, highs, lows, confusion, sadness, and, ultimately, requisite redemption associated with intimate relationships gone astray. Dylan maintains it’s a work of fiction, but it’s evident close-vested autobiographical premise is what helps make it universal: It’s the icon singing through tears, going out of his mind, battling hallowing emptiness, firing shots across the bow, and accepting culpability. It is, in short, a consummate expression of love’s darker sides and the consequences of what happens when dreams unravel.

As part of its Bob Dylan catalog restoration series, Mobile Fidelity is thoroughly humbled to have the privilege of mastering the iconic LP from the original master tapes and making it available on hybrid SACD. Fantastically presenting both the solo acoustic and band-supported songs with the utmost clarity, dynamics, presence, immediacy, spaciousness, imaging, and balance, this version shines a high-powered light on the fluid vocal phrasing, timbral shifts, functional rhythms, and inward-looking strumming that contribute to every song here serving as a wound-exposing confessional.

For all the melancholic pain, unresolved questions, shattered memories, wasted times, unrequited dialogs, and weary regret within, Blood on the Tracks remains as daring as it is reflective. Rather than follow for a monotone caustic vibe, Dylan’s songs burrow into the subconscious for the manners in which they are even-keeled, mellow, and occasionally, even peaceful. Dignity, honor, poignancy, and fairness—all traits uncommon in any situation in which partners dissolve histories, change hearts, and attribute blame—instill the record with equilibrium on par with the consistency of the flowing melodies.

Throughout, tunes come on and proceed as if they could continue forever, Dylan spinning poetic verses and conversations amidst finely tied knots of acoustic notes, chords, and fills, the deceivingly simple architecture conjuring the intertwined refractions of a bezeled jewel, various angles, colors, and textures conjoining into a gorgeously inseparable whole. Backed by Tony Brown’s flexible albeit subtle bass, Buddy Cage’s country-streaked pedal-steel guitar, and Paul Griffin’s soul-baring organ—an instrument used to shadow, tuckpoint, and illuminate here as effectively as any time in rock history—Dylan pours soulful emotion, open his veins, and bleeds.

Ranked 16 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and replete with existential thought, piercing directness, raw singing, and majestic arrangements.

"[T]hanks to state-of-the-art remastering, this classic has never sounded better, especially in this new Mobile Fidelity SACD... The music ranges from the Blonde on Blonde-era organ balladry of 'Idiot Wind' and the self-effacing blues of 'Meet Me in the Morning' to the wordy 'Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts' and the folksy finger-style guitar of 'Buckets of Rain.' ... [I]t has... a sonic purity - that well suits the intimate nature of these sessions." - Greg Cahill, The Absolute Sound, April 2013, 5/5 Music, 4.5/5 Sonics

Features:
• Super Audio CD
• SACD Stereo SACD Layer
• This Hybrid SACD contains a 'Red Book' Stereo CD Layer which is playable on most conventional CD Players!
• Numbered, Limited Edition
• Mastered From Original Master Tapes

Selections:
1. Tangled Up in Blue
2. Simple Twist of Fate
3. You’re A Big Girl Now
4. Idiot Wind
5. You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go
6. Meet Me in the Morning
7. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
8. If You See Her, Say Hello
9. Shelter From the Storm
10. Buckets of Rain