Bob Dylan Remains Brilliantly Elusive in “Shadow Kingdom”
The iconic singer-songwriter presents another esoteric musical expression with his excellent broadcast event.
Bob Dylan’s 60-year career has been a whirlwind of astonishing lyrics, sublime melodies, reinvention, and strange behavior. From moments of true musical genius to bizarre interviews, his boundless creativity may only be matched by his inscrutability.
Dylan provided plenty of mystery in his new musical film Shadow Kingdom, which streamed online July 18–25, 2021. There is no storyline or narrative — only Dylan performing 13 songs, all but one from the first decade of his career. But there are characters, scenery, and themes, which combine with Dylan’s re-arranged classics to create a pleasurable, engaging experience.
The songs were unrecognizable from their recorded counterparts. Phrasing, tempos, soundscapes, and even genres changed to fit Dylan’s current mode of musical expression.
The spare, acoustic, and sometimes bluesy performances fit perfectly with the film’s noir ambience. Filmed entirely in black and white, with multiple stage and costume changes, the film features Dylan crooning and strumming the guitar with his band in hazy, smoke-filled bar rooms replete with characters resembling 1950’s hard-boiled detectives, lonely grifters, and alluring femme fatales.
Song highlights include stripped-down, country-tinged versions of Queen Jane Approximately, Tombstone Blues, and It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue, the only three songs filmed without an audience. Dylan talk-sings his opaque lyrics with graceful finesse, his voice a marvel of consistency and placement, his band blending to form an ethereal musical landscape behind him.
Conspicuously missing from the film are some of his greatest hits from his early era: Like A Rolling Stone, Mr. Tambourine Man, All Along The Watchtower, and The Times Are A-Changin’ are nowhere to be found.
This is no surprise to staunch Dylan fans — he frequently dismisses his most well-known songs in concerts to re-explore the obscure. Here, he performs a delicately nuanced version of The Wicked Messenger and a beautifully poetic (and somewhat neurotic) version of To Be Alone With You, featuring lyrics almost entirely different from the Nashville Skyline album version:
To be alone with you
Just you and I
Beneath the moon
Under the star-spangled sky
To be alone with you
Even for just an hour
In a castle high
In an ivory tower
I’ll hound you to death
That’s just what I’ll do
I won’t sleep a wink
’Til I’m alone with you
What happened to me, darling?
What was it you saw?
Did I kill somebody?
Did I escape the law?
Got my heart in my mouth
My eyes are still blue
My mortal bliss
Is to be alone with you
In the most tender moment of the film, Dylan stands alone, spotlighted in a trim white coat, and passionately gestures as he sings a melodic, elegant version of one of his most sentimental songs, Forever Young. As always, you can tell he means every word:
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
And may you stay
Forever young
Another standout is a rollicking, bluesy version of I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight featuring an electrifying guitar lick and a slick transition into a country ballad over the last minute of the song. Enveloped in a haze of smoke, Dylan performs an exquisite, bright version of Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues as an enigmatic group of young men in fedoras watch and puff cigarettes, sip beer and gaze off into the distance.
As always, his musicians are at the top of their game — the performances feature prominent acoustic guitar, bass, and accordion, with electric and pedal steel guitar sprinkled in. The band’s precision and intricacy are truly remarkable. The only thing we don’t know is if the musicians playing in the film are the same who recorded in the studio (this seems unlikely — the band sounds identical to his usual touring and studio band).
Dylan, fresh off the release of his 2020 album Rough and Rowdy Ways and with a year off from touring, sounds as good as he has in 20 years. Shadow Kingdom is a captivating visual and musical project that exceeds the lofty expectations constantly placed upon his work.
We may never get an explanation of how this project was formulated or receive any insight regarding the chosen songs, artistic choices, or what the film really means. And that’s what it’s always been like with Dylan — he performs, people desperately try to decode his message, and usually no one ever gets a definitive answer.
And it’s perfectly fine to not know. It’s OK to perpetually wonder. Sometimes, that’s the best part about being a fan of Bob Dylan.
