Lost on the River
(Electromagnetic Recordings/ Harvest Records)
What could go wrong? Take a passel of unfinished Bob Dylan songs from the mid-’60s, pass ’em on, put T-Bone Burnett in charge of producing an album, and — best of all — let other folks sing them. Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it. Lost on the River isn’t a horrible album, but it’s surely among 2014’s most disappointing. It’s a muddy, meandering drift to nowhere.
Mistakes were made. First, not every word Dylan wrote was golden. Check out “Duncan and Jimmy” and keep an airsickness bag handy. Second, there is an enormous difference between singing Bob Dylan songs and getting Dylan. The artists who collectively call themselves The New Basement Tapes put original scores to the Dylan fragments. The best efforts come from Lewis Mumford and Elvis Costello — Mumford because he keeps arrangements simple so we can make out Dylan’s lyrics, and Costello because he’s old enough to understand the Boho sensibilities that inspired Dylan.
Mumford is especially sharp on “Kansas City” and “The Whistle is Blowing,” which come closest to sounding like the way Dylan might have shaped the tunes. Costello nails the Beat poetry cadences of “Married to My Hack.” Jim James (My Morning Jacket) does well with “Down to the Bottom,” but on other tracks drowns the lyrics by over-adorning them with instrumentation. Also on the downside are selections from Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, an artist I generally admire. Her big voice is such a drawback on this project that “Hidee Hidee Ho # 16” comes off like an outtake from a histrionic Jazz Age stage show. But she’s fine compared to Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes), who is clueless on this project. He makes “Card Shark” sound like it should be on a children’s music CD. G-rated Dylan? Please! Even Mumford and Costello occasionally drop the ball. Mumford’s “When I Get My Hands on You” is a brilliant interpretation — of Paul Simon; Costello’s take on the title track has less shape than a mu-mu.
The next time a Dylan cache surfaces, the finders should ask him what he had in mind. The fact that several of the fragments from Lost on the River exist in different versions strongly suggests that there were days Dylan simply forgot to take out the trash.
—Rob Weir
