Various Artists
I’m Not There original soundtrack
(Columbia)
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This companion to Todd Haynes’ upcoming metamorphic portrait of the life and music of Bob Dylan “plays like a real album,” said Stephen Deusner in Pitchforkmedia.com. Producers Joe Henry and Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo have assembled an impressive class of performers to cover the master’s music, bringing the young (Cat Power, Karen O, Stephen Malkmus) together with the old (Willie Nelson, Tom Verlaine, Richie Havens). The sprawling selection of 34 Dylan songs recounts “nearly every fabled aspect of his career: his earnest folkie beginnings, his electric post- Newport days, his conversion to Christianity, his 1980s nadir, and finally his current status as an eccentric éminence grise.” Just as the film portrays Dylan’s ever-evolving identity, the soundtrack richly captures one man in many voices. From Jim James’ harrowing “Goin’ to Acapulco” to John Doe’s hymnal “Pressing On,” the pairings “share dark, haunting, and ambiguous qualities that rattle the soul,” said Phil Gallo in Variety. The soundtrack expresses “what feels correct, not necessarily what’s historically correct.” Devotees will always feel “nobody does a better job on Dylan songs than Dylan,” said Joe Heim in The Washington Post. But if the collection of classic and cult covers can’t lure them, the previously unreleased title track—recorded by the man himself for The Basement Tapes— probably will.
