It\u2019s difficult to say anything negative about a Christmas album. Even as I come within sniffing distance of forty, there\u2019s that fear that coming down hard on an album that is supposed to celebrate the holiday season will incur the wrath of Jesus and Santa combined\u2026 and I\u2019m not sure which I fear the most.<\/p>\n
But in the case of Christmas In The Heart<\/i>, the first (and hopefully last) Christmas album from Bob Dylan, the criticism comes easy.<\/p>\n
As he closes in on a half-century since his debut album came out, Dylan definitely bears the scars of life as a musician. The problem is that they\u2019re all located on his vocal cords. One reviewer (whose name escapes me) said that there was a Tom Waits-like quality to Dylan\u2019s singing on this disc \u2013 but if I were Waits, I\u2019d be suing that writer for libel. No, Dylan comes off on this disc sounding like he gargled with sulfuric acid just before stepping up to the microphone. Yes, the end result is that painful.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that Dylan still can\u2019t sing; it\u2019s that he just can\u2019t reach the higher octaves anymore. Listen \u2013 at your own risk, mind you \u2013 to \u201cDo You Hear What I Hear,\u201d and the first time he goes for that higher C, the nails-on-sandpaper timbre to his voice literally made my skin crawl. It got to the point that, at the end of the song, I was praying that Dylan wasn\u2019t going to go for that last high note to end the track (so much for the religious side of the season; my prayers weren\u2019t answered.)<\/p>\n
Now, I\u2019m aware that Dylan plays loose with song structure; I\u2019ve listened to enough of his albums over the years to know that something as simple as 4\/4 time structure is merely a \u201cserving suggestion\u201d for Dylan. But when he plays fast and loose with the lyrics of \u201cHave Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,\u201d complete with the same painful vocals that permeate this disc, you know that somewhere in the Arctic, the fat man in the red suit is quickly adding the former Robert Zimmerman to the \u201cnaughty\u201d list.<\/p>\n
But, you say to the reviewer masquerading as the Grinch, there must be some<\/i> bright spot to Christmas In The Heart<\/i>. Um, not really. I guess I could point out that Dylan\u2019s singing isn\u2019t as painful when he keeps things in the lower areas of the scale, as he does on \u201cLittle Drummer Boy\u201d \u2013 but he finds ways of screwing even this up as heard on \u201cThe First Noel.\u201d Memo to Dylan: next time you step to the microphone to sing, clear your throat, for heaven\u2019s sake!<\/i> <\/p>\n
No matter how you look at it, Christmas In The Heart<\/i> is a mistake, pure and simple. From the caffeinated polka of \u201cMust Be Santa\u201d to Dylan\u2019s spin on a Christmas tale on \u201cThe Christmas Blues,\u201d all the way to his massacring classics like \u201cAdeste Fideles\u201d and \u201cSilver Bells,\u201d whoever gave this disc the green light should be shoved down the chimney and left there to rot.<\/p>\n
Why Dylan even needed to record a holiday album this late into his career is a question \u2013 the only good thing about this disc is that the proceeds benefit charities, such as Feeding America. Too bad that Dylan made an album that would make even a starving man lose his lunch.<\/p>\n
For years, I thought that Ringo Starr\u2019s I Wanna Be Santa Claus<\/i> was the worst Christmas album ever recorded. Ten years later, there is a new champion (and I use that term loosely). I would rather drive cross-country in a van filled with colicky infants than listen to this turdburger again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5866],"rating":[5620],"class_list":["post-41805","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-bob-dylan","rating-rating-f"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41805"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41805"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}