Blowing In The Wind and The Girl From The North Country are quite good. He only wrote the words though, having taken the tunes from elsewhere. And even the words were mostly lifted direct or else reiterated the tone of the original songs: an old spiritual and a folk song.
Of Dylan's own work here catalogued, I will say he has a decent guitar technique. Due to his tight-throated straining to stay on a note it is almost irrelevant that the songs are all in a very small group of keys. I say almost irrelevant because the inexpensive addition of a couple of differently pitched harmonicas and a capo would have provided some relief from his excruciatingly dull pattern of sucking and blowing what little life there was in these songs to begin with.
There are moments, as in Bob Dylan's Dream, when something genuinely heartfelt and insightful happens. He still wilfully disregards any kind of meter, leading us to believe that he isn't going for conversational, rambling and quirky but rather he's incapable of form. There are some nice lyrical ideas in the World War III blues but the guitar pattern is already getting very tired by this point and the ubiquitous harp is there to rescue me from any chance of enjoying it even in the smallest way.
I'll give it one star but only cuz I don't wanna seem churlish. So, my policy remains unchanged. Bob Dylan Can Fuck Off.
Only another 6 Bob albums to go and the early ones are the good ones. Surely worth at least another star for A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall
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