The Vatican rocks as it simultaneously gives a thumbs up and thumbs down to Bob Dylan’s album ‘Tempest’

The Vat­ican news­pa­per L’Osservatore Romano, has given a rave review of Bob Dylan’s latest album ‘Tem­pest’. But in a very Italian way, it has also given the album a bad review. Two con­trast­ing opin­ions side by side.

Giulia Galeotti says:

It’s like bit­ing into a cake at the best pastry shop. The first bite is already prom­ising, yet doesn’t give everything away, but bit­ing on through the lay­ers dif­fer­ent fla­vours are dis­covered, the sub­tle­ness of the ingredi­ents. The same goes for Bob Dylan’s work. With ‘Tem­pest’ there’s imme­di­ately a desire to dig below the surface…

The album, which shot straight to num­ber three on the Bill­board 200, con­tains a 14-minute song about the Titanic called Sad, Sad Story.

The folk bal­lad of almost 14 minutes on the sad, sad story of the great ship engulfed by seas sharp and clear, is an instant, and is infin­ite. The Titanic sank. Bob Dylan, abso­lutely not.

Col­league Giuseppe Fiorentino has other ideas:

He might not have sunk like the Titanic, but he can barely keep afloat, and is nav­ig­at­ing blind­folded. When a song inspired by the wreck, repeats the same unchan­ging pro­gres­sion of notes for almost four­teen minutes, how could it be otherwise?

…But Dylan has a is so wor­shipped by crit­ics and fans that this disc will surely acquire a cult fol­low­ing. In fair­ness, it should be said that like oth­ers of his gen­er­a­tion, Dylan still strives to pro­duce new work. But his  intense, mature and dra­matic voice could have been put to bet­ter use at the ser­vice of richer musical content.

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