If Saved did anything, it proved that the born-again Christianity of Slow Train Coming wasn't merely a passing fad, and that it did, in fact, mean something significant to Dylan. Whether it meant something significant to his audience was another matter entirely, since this is where his religion overshadows his music, turning the album into a sermon to an audience that is nearly certainly unconverted — and never will be, either. Dylan himself may be part of that audience, since he did back away from such a staunchly dogged viewpoint not long afterward, but that doesn't change Saved's status as being a fairly flat — and, for Dylan, fairly pedestrian — testament to his faith. And, if Slow Train Coming found him at a fairly creative peak of songwriting and supported by a supple backing band, he's turning out routine songs here, and the backing follows suit, resulting in his flattest record yet.

I'm prepared to declare Saved roughly 10,000x better than Slow Train Coming. Like, it's not even close--gospel underpinnings and more concise arrangements beat boring songs, lousy sound and production and terrible lyrics every day of the week.

Would love to hear from tentoze on this but apparently he thinks that you are allowed to leave these exercises mid stream.

I'm prepared to declare Saved roughly 10,000x better than Slow Train Coming. Like, it's not even close--gospel underpinnings and more concise arrangements beat boring songs, lousy sound and production and terrible lyrics every day of the week.

Would love to hear from tentoze on this but apparently he thinks that you are allowed to leave these exercises mid stream.

Bloor, how can you listen to 'In the Garden' and not want to fucking kill yourself? I didn't feel this level of animosity towards myself during Slow Train. This is just ghastly fucking garbage.

What can I say, it's groovy.

I'm prepared to declare Saved roughly 10,000x better than Slow Train Coming. Like, it's not even close--gospel underpinnings and more concise arrangements beat boring songs, lousy sound and production and terrible lyrics every day of the week.

Would love to hear from tentoze on this but apparently he thinks that you are allowed to leave these exercises mid stream.

I'm out.

Shot of Love finds Dylan still in born-again mode, but he's starting to come alive again — which isn't as much a value judgment as it is an observation that he no longer seems beholden to repeating dogma, loosening up and crafting songs again. And it's not just that his writing is looser, the music is, too, as he lets himself — and his backing band — rock a little harder, a little more convincingly. Shot of Love still isn't a great album, but it once again has flashes of brilliance, such as "Every Grain of Sand," which point the way to the rebirth of Infidels.

Oh man, wait until you have to endure "Property of Jesus" tomorrow.

I still say there is untapped value on Saved that you are discounting, Dump.

As for Shot of Love, he obviously saves the best for last with "Every Grain of Sand" though even it treads dangerously close to the sort of overwrought production that ruined people like Willie Nelson's work in this era--the backing tracks all sound like they were charted out by a fresh faced music major and fed into something plastic and shiny.

Infidels was the first secular record Bob Dylan recorded since Street Legal, and it's far more like a classicist Dylan album than that one, filled with songs that are evocative in their imagery and direct in their approach. This is lean, much like Slow Train Coming, but its writing is closer to Dylan's peak of the mid-'70s, and some of the songs here — particularly on the first side — are minor classics, capturing him reviving his sense of social consciousness and his gift for poetic, elegant love songs. For a while, Infidels seems like a latter-day masterpiece, but toward the end of the record it runs out of steam, preventing itself from being a triumph. Still, in comparison to everything that arrived in the near-decade before it, Infidels is a triumph, finding Dylan coming tantalizingly close to regaining all his powers.