Clicking on this link will bring you down with the groove at the main Bob Dylan page... Down in the Soup Overall Album Score: 6.5 out of 10 Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. On the bright side, as the 80s are coming to a close, Bobby is finally beginning to steer away from pop and go back to rock … albeit this is all rather generic blues-rock, and I get more excited over a piece of road-kill opossum than this! (Ooooy vey!) This has got to be Dylan’s most unimaginative album of all time. That’s an arguable statement, but … I don’t feel much like arguing with myself. Okay. There’s one really good song in here. It’s called “Silvio.” That one’s the most imaginative song in here. There are also a good handful of songs that are really fun, funny, or are just plain good. There’s “Let’s Stick Together” (fun), “Ugliest Girl in the World” (funny), and “Death is Not the End” (just plain good). The rest of the songs are mediocre and some are just plain sloppy. The worst of the bunch, “When Did You Leave Heaven?,” sounds like a Phil Collins send up … it’s just awful! Alright, so this is another ignorable bit of the Bob Dylan discography. The entire 80s decade has been pretty ignorable! (He’s only got one more album in that decade left to go.) This, like the other 80s Dylan album, is only for the die-hards. Overall Album Score: 6.5 out of 10 (This is quite a bit better than that embarassing Knocked Out Loaded, but this can still be considered doo doo, relatively speaking.) Average Song Score: 7.0 (Hello! Bob Dylan still isn’t cool. But he’s fun. Fun is awesome.) Album Tilt: 6.5 (This album is too generic for my tastes … and I think any Bob Dylan fan hearing this for the first time might slap their palms on their foreheads and shake their heads in near shame. But Bob’s sense of humor is returning. Even though he had a lyric-collaborator on the funniest ones.) Artist Rating: 6.0 (GENERIC.) Track Reviews Let’s Stick Together 8/10 This is a light’n’catchy blues-rock number! Really, this sounds more like something that Bob might write for a hardware store commercial … but that’s not to the detriment of its quality! Ummm … well, this might be a cheap and throwaway song, but it’s fun! Fun is good. When Did You Leave Heaven? 5/10 Ohhhhhhhhh… I see, Bob Collins. We’re trying to create a regular old boring old 80s old adult contemporary ballad. Really! If it wasn’t for the fact that this song is so short (it’s a bit more than two minutes), this would really be a total clunker! Instead of it clunking, it clinks. This is just sloppy and utterly throwaway. Sally Sue Brown 6.5/10 This is tolerable … I really wish that Bob would have put more care into these! … I mean, this song isn’t *AWFUL* or anything. It’s just not any good because it’s too hastily put together! HmmmHMMM! Boooooooooreeeeeeeeeengngngnggngggg! Death is Not the End 8/10 It’s a Christian song … sort of. Well, it’s a religious song at any rate. This still needed a lot more work. It’s a nice song, and it’s the first one in here that reminds me fondly of the old Bob Dylan of the late 60s. Unfortunately, this is very slowly paced, and nothing about the song keeps it tremendously interesting. Zzzzzzzzzzz. But it is a nice song. It’s probably the nicest one of the album. (I wish he could have stayed away from those 80s drums … just for once …) Had a Dream About You Baby 6/10 Well, you don’t have to be so generic, either!!! Anyone who’d just decide to make a song that rocks would come out with something almost exactly like this! HOW GENERIC! Why don’t we just sell this one for two bucks to the local carpet store to use for their cable commercials? Blah! Ugliest Girl in the World 8/10 This still has cheesy, generic local commercial music written all over it, but this one is actually good. The crunchy guitar is fun, the melody is catchy … the lyrics are … interesting … Yeah. This is a formidable late-period Dylan composition. Silvio 8.5/10 Wow! The instrumentation on this one is just … weird. (It’s still definitely 80s … what with those DRUMS.) But this is really kind of good! The melody isn’t the best or the most catchy ever. I think the instrumentation here is rather neat, though … for the first time on the album. Ninety Miles an Hour (Down a Dead End Street) 6/10 Yawwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnnn! This is kind of a funny song, but it’s too sloppy for me to be enjoyable. Ooooohhh so much unlike “Silvio.” I think I’m going to listen to that one again, baby. This one el stinko. Shenandoah 7/10 I don’t care enough to research this, but wasn’t this originally an old folk song?? Whatever the case, Dylan does a fine job with it. I really like that ukelele (if that’s a ukelele). This song is marginally entertaining. It works! Rank Strangers to Me 6.5/10 Hmmm … this is a boring old country music cover. Ho hum. But at least there’s no 80s drumming on it!!!!!!!!!!!!! With all the boringness of the country music, it comes with boringness non-80s instrumentation … YAAAAAYYYY! It’s still boring, though. Pooh. Do you feel down in the groove enough to send me your thoughts about this album here?

All reviews are copyrighted by the author, Michael Lawrence. He's terrifying.