Various Artists – I’m Not There soundtrack
You’ve heard the one about the three blind men trying to describe the elephant, only each individual was touching a completely different part of the beast and nobody understood the whole animal? Make the elephant a whole lot bigger, keep it moving around, and throw a hundred or more musicians into the room with it, and you begin to grasp the task involved in paying tribute to Bob Dylan.
This is the soundtrack to the Todd Haynes movie in which six different actors (including Cate Blanchett) portray Dylanesque figures from different points in his constantly metamorphosizing legendary life. As a collection of Dylan covers, it leaves off the most obvious songs — no “Blowing In The Wind”, no “Like A Rolling Stone”, no “Shelter From The Storm” — in favor of an eclectic assortment of lesser hits, mostly from Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde, and obscurities known only to Dylan fanatics. Performers include the creme de la creme of contemporary hipsters, from Willie Nelson to the Hold Steady, from Los Lobos to Jeff Tweedy, from Yo La Tengo to Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.
Generalizing about this two-disc set with 34 cuts performed by 29 different headlining singers or bands (and dozens more backing musicians) is impossible. Guitar fans will be blown away by the Million Dollar Bashers, featuring Tom Verlaine of Television, Nels Cline of Wilco, and Lee Renaldo of Sonic Youth, who back several singers. Calexico turns up backing quite a few artists, too.
Virtually nobody fails to capture some sense of what Dylan’s version of the songs meant, and some singers come close to outdoing the originals. That’s true especially on the two tracks featuring John Doe, who virtually opens the heavens with his version of “Pressing On” from Dylan’s gospel album Saved, and sounds even better on the transcendent “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augstine” from John Wesley Harding.