Blood on the Tracks

1	Tangled up in Blue 5:41
2	Simple Twist of Fate 4:17
3	You're a Big Girl Now 4:34
4	Idiot Wind 7:47
5	You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go 2:55
6	Meet Me in the Morning 4:21
7	Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts 8:52
8	If You See Her, Say Hello 4:47
9	Shelter from the Storm 5:00
10	Buckets of Rain 3:22

Barnes & Noble

Every few years, Bob Dylan returns to form with an album that is widely touted as his best since Blood on the Tracks. Pretty ironic, since this 1975 masterpiece came at just such a moment, when Dylan's career seemed in decline. Only his hardiest fans had been able to stomach 1974's Planet Waves, and the live recording Before the Flood was interesting mostly for its radical reworking of older material. But from the first notes of "Tangled Up in Blue," the opening cut of Blood on the Tracks, Dylan offers pure piercing poetry. Many of the songs are about emotional debris following a crumbled marriage, though Dylan looks at the political landscape in "Idiot Wind" -- gamely criticizing even himself -- and his cinematic, playful tale "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts" deserves to be made into a western. Dylan went on to make Desire, a recording almost as good, before beginning another of his periodic slumps. Martin Johnson

All Music Guide

Following on the heels of an album where he repudiated his past with his greatest backing band, Blood on the Tracks finds Bob Dylan, in a way, retreating to the past, recording a largely quiet, acoustic-based album. But this is hardly nostalgia -- this is the sound of an artist returning to his strengths, what feels most familiar, as he accepts a traumatic situation, namely the breakdown of his marriage. This is an album alternately bitter, sorrowful, regretful, and peaceful, easily the closest he ever came to wearing his emotions on his sleeve. That's not to say that it's an explicitly confessional record, since many songs are riddles or allegories, yet the warmth of the music makes it feel that way. The original version of the album was even quieter -- first takes of "Idiot Wind" and "Tangled Up in Blue," available on The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3, are hushed and quiet (excised verses are quoted in the liner notes, but not heard on the record) -- but Blood on the Tracks remains an intimate, revealing affair since these harsher takes let his anger surface the way his sadness does elsewhere. As such, it's an affecting, unbearably poignant record, not because it's a glimpse into his soul, but because the songs are remarkably clear-eyed and sentimental, lovely and melancholy at once. And, in a way, it's best that he was backed with studio musicians here, since the professional, understated backing lets the songs and emotion stand at the forefront. Dylan made albums more influential than this, but he never made one better. Stephen Thomas Erlewine