It’s particularly impressive on What Was It You Wanted, a cut from 1989’s Oh Mercy that doesn’t seem especially ‘Early’ until you realise it was recorded 27 years into Dylan’s career, and that 34 years have subsequently elapsed. Sung in an acoustic sertting, with a 'one-take' feel, they are, as you'd expect, noticably different from the originals. Shadow Kingdom consists of new recordings of 13 songs from the first half of Dylan's career plus a new instrumental song titled "Sierra's Theme". This, perhaps, is the key to Shadow Kingdom, and a decent artistic reason – the commercial expediencies being self-evident – why Dylan has chosen to release the show as an album now. Shadow Kingdom presents Dylan performing revelatory 21st century versions of songs from his storied back catalog – including fan favorites like “Forever Young” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” and deep catalog gems like “Queen Jane Approximately” and “The Wicked Messenger.

The film was incredibly well received (check out the two quotes at the top) and the new arrangements plus Dylan’s vocals really shine.Shadow Kingdom the album, then, turns out to be an extremely useful addition to the Dylan catalogue, and very much of a piece with his current manoeuvres. The album was preceded by a single for " Watching the River Flow", which was released on streaming platforms and as a YouTube video on April 13, 2023.

Originally reinterpreted for an exclusive streaming film event, which aired in July 2021, Shadow Kingdom will now be available on vinyl, CD, and streaming platforms for the first time.Sodomsky also discussed director Alma Har'el's "knack for visualizing the haunted barroom production that Dylan has favored on his modern studio albums: As he sings in dusky rooms filled with cigarette smoke and lamplight, mannequins and Western characters, the whole thing takes on a surreal, ghostlike quality". from 1989's Oh Mercy favourite tracks include Queen Jane Approximately, Most Likely You Go Your Way [ And I'll Go Mine], When I Paint My Masterpiece and Watching The River Flow. Murky photos suggest the touring band, with light electric guitar on a bed of acoustics, with occasional accordian and pedal steel.

What Bob has done is to go back to key albums in the 60s and 70s, with one title from Oh Mercy from 1989, and re-recorded some less obvious songs. The album's setlist includes 13 original songs handpicked by Dylan plus the closing instrumental, "Sierra's Theme. The album's cover photograph is a black-and-white still image of Bob Dylan playing the harmonica taken from the film Shadow Kingdom: The Early Songs of Bob Dylan, directed by Alma Har'el and shot by Lol Crawley. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Shadow Kingdom presents Dylan performing revelatory 21st century versions of songs from his storied back catalog – including fan favourites like "Forever Young" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," and deep catalog gems like "Queen Jane Approximately" and "The Wicked Messenger.And what the subtitle described as ‘The Early Songs Of Bob Dylan’, reconfigured without drums to complement the liminal atmosphere of director Alma Har’el’s visuals. Shadow Kingdom showcases Bob Dylan in an intimate setting as he performs songs from his extensive body of work, created especially for this event. The Daily Telegraph 's Neil McCormick gave the album a five out of five star rating and wrote: "What an absolute joy it is, in which the grand old man of songcraft flips through his own back pages with genuine relish, a man in his 80’s revisiting the words of his firebrand youth and finding entirely new meanings there". I don't quite know what this album is about other than it was some project that Dylan worked on last year, and I don't know what the musical interlude between each song is about.

It has an interesting track list, Now do I hate it 'No' he's made worse studio albums but I certainly don't love or dig it as he's made studio albums on completely different levels. It has always been easy to read stuff into Dylan's work which is not there, but the choice of songs / lyrics for this set do suggest a muted farewell to the faithful, particularly Watching the river flow and When I paint my masterpiece. Four selections turn up on both Shadow Kingdom and in recent live setlists – When I Paint My Masterpiece, Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine), I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight and To Be Alone With You.The old songs and vintage effect might invoke a certain nostalgia, but the juke joint ambience is more Lynchian than neat historic reconstruction, and the songs sound little like they used to do. The album charted in at least 19 countries and reached the top 10 in Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Scotland and Switzerland. Shadow Kingdom presents Dylan performing revelatory 21st century versions of songs from his storied back catalog – including fan favorites like “Forever Young” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” and deep catalog gems like “Queen Jane Approximately” and “Wicked Messenger. Shadow Kingdom presents Dylan performing revelatory 21st century versions of songs from his storied back catalogue – including fan favourites like "Forever Young" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," and deep catalogue gems like "Queen Jane Approximately" and "The Wicked Messenger. Uncut's Damien Love also invoked the work of Lynch, describing Shadow Kingdom as "deeply-felt surrealist-noir-Americana", as well as the paintings in Dylan's own "Beaten Path" series ("a handmade place of lost highways and forgotten barrooms and city lights in smeary rain; of lonely drive-in movie lots and funky diners and juke joints that all seem to float in some unfixed time that could be anywhere from the early-1930s to early tomorrow morning") and the Depression-era boarding-house setting of Conor McPherson's musical play Girl from the North Country.