When Bob Dylan made a performance film, “Shadow Kingdom,” that streamed via the Veeps platform for one week in July 2021, PvNew reviewed the special, writing that it had “new arrangements so good that pretty much everybody who was watching Sunday was clamoring for a soundtrack to the event, preferably on LP.”
That wish is coming true, two years later. (But not just on vinyl.) The music from “Shadow Kingdom” will be released in album form in June. The album version shall be released June 6 on streaming platforms and as a CD and double-LP. The film itself, out of circulation since that initial one-week pay-per-view window, will become available for rental and download for the first time in June, as well.
A single from the album, “Watching the River Flow,” is out on DSPs now. The original version is a one-off single from 1971 that is somewhat obscure — not to Dylanologists, of course, but probably to most rank-and-file listeners, at least compared to the mostly more familiar ’60s, ’70s and ’80s material that makes up the rest of the set.
The track list includes all 13 songs that were in the film, along with the instrumental that closed it out, now identified as “Sierra’s Theme.”
In July 2021, with very few expectations from the Dylan camp of what the pandemic-era show would entail, it was subtitled “The Early Songs of Bob Dylan.” PvNew reviewed the stream (“Bob Dylan Gets Smoke in His Eyes, but Not So Much in His Excellent Vocals, in Lynch-esque ‘Shadow Kingdom’”), saying: “The 50-minute performance special was set in a fictional, stylized nightclub, possibly in the 1940s or ’50s or just a timeless twilight zone, where every single person in the tiny audience, man and woman alike, was smoking like a chimney, to a degree that seemed less like period specificity and almost like comedy. That collective scream you heard Sunday was from the American Lung Association … One thing that did not go up in smoke was the hopes of Dylan fans, who’d had faith that this special would be something special, but did not really know much about what they were signing up for when they paid their $25. What they got, most would agree, was better — if shorter — than they imagined.”
Some outlets reported Thursday that the new release is a “live album” captured at a “concert.” That is hardly the case, although the music certainly has a live and untreated vibe. In the original review of the film, PvNew noted that the music on-screen appeared to be at least partly pre-recorded prior to the shoot. “Reportedly, the real location was somewhere in Santa Monica, but the end credits helpfully hinted that the location shoot had really been at the Bon Bon Club in Marseille. (There’s no such place, naturally.) … For now we’ll have to let the mystery be — and think of this as an extended music video, not a concert. Whoever was doing the playing, it was terrific.”
The review also praised Dylan’s vocals, saying, “He hasn’t sounded better in decades … That he had a beautiful tone to his melodious declarations, even enunciating to a shockingly clear degree, surely has something to do with a pandemic-mandated year-plus break in his usual relentless touring routine.”
The “Shadow Kingdom” film was directed by Alma Ha’rel (“Honey Boy”) and produced by Harel with Christopher Leggett and Rafael Marmor.
The full song list:
When I Paint My Masterpiece
Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)
Queen Jane Approximately
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues
Tombstone Blues
To Be Alone With You
What Was It You Wanted
Forever Young
Pledging My Time
The Wicked Messenger
Watching the River Flow
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
Sierra’s Theme
