Bob Dylan - Slow Train Coming

If you’re not a Bob Dylan fan, I would encourage you to become one. There are moments, and this happened to me, when you suddenly discover how utterly awesome he is. You get past the endless and unfair criticism of his voice and all of those other quirks that deflect the obvious genius that is Bob.
You start to assume ambivalence towards those who don’t get it, or care to get it, and it’s a very liberating experience. So the next time you hear those things like “He’s an awful singer.” You just quietly think “Right….And you are?” because anyone who has half a brain knows that Bob Dylan is a great singer; his phrasing alone has influence countless people just as his words have influenced countless more.
The other aspect about the church of Bob is how you’re able to move on to a new phase in his career. So, no matter how many times I tell you that Dylan & the Dead is a worthless piece of shit (and it is), you’re still going to reach a point where you ignore me and examine that album anyway.
I was the same way with Dylan’s Christian phase, an era I remember somewhat if only for the underhanded rumblings of the opinionated dismissing this period entirely. And on the surface, the idea of Bob mixing it up with secular themes is indeed a ludicrous notion, just like using beer as a substitute for the milk in your Cap’n Crunch.
It doesn’t work. It doesn’t taste good. Stick with the 2%.
Bad analogy; Dylan’s Christian phase is more along the lines of soy milk: it’s not for everyone but for others, and I’m talking about those who frequent the church of Bob, it’s not as awful as those naysayers would have you believe.
First of all, there’s the production. A laid-back sheen courtesy of Mark Knopfler’s production values that sound tepid while managing not to sound dated.
It doesn’t sound that inspired either. Every note seems to drip from an arranger’s music sheet, immaculately performed by professional arrangements. This is a far cry from the manic bus wheel performances of the Rolling Thunder Revue from just a few years prior. Instead, we get the obligatory Knopfler guitar tone, an occasional backing horn arrangement, and female backing vocals that serve no purpose other than to take up some additional credit space on the liner notes.
Slow Train Coming, the first in Dylan’s three Christian albums, is a change in direction, no doubt about it, even if the change is more of a spiritual one instead of a musical shift. This is about as roots-oriented as you could get in the late 70’s, but compared to his late-career material or the folk delivery of his earliest efforts, Slow Train Coming could pass for a fairly credible MOR effort.
“Fairly credible MOR effort” is a polite description for, say, a Neil Diamond album, but for Bob Dylan, it tends to deflate the importance of his legacy and, yes sir, there was some serious deflation going on with his around this time.
And, somewhat unfairly, it started with this album.