Although blastingas sounds a bit luke-warm about this album, I haven`t been as impressed by a Dylan album since "Love and Theft", or maybe even "Oh Mercy."
With the track you mention, Tin Angel, Dylan returns to a form of which he is surely the absolute master; the epic story song. And this story has all the best Dylan trademarks; the sense of mystery and drama and the little unnecessary details, which bring the characters to life. I love the way he slips in the line, He ran his hand through his greasy hair, the same way I loved the way he slipped, She was thinking about her father, whom she very rarely saw into Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts.
The 14-minute title track is another superb story song, which demonstrates how Dylan is able to jump around between different worlds. With Tin Angel he revisits the surreal gothic Americana landscape of Isis, while with Tempest ( and elsewhere on the album) he trawls through real events and popular culture; not just the Titanic disaster itself, but the protagonists of the famous movie too.
Without doing a track by track analysis, I`d say that "Tempest" has enough great lyrics and varied, lively music to make it an excellent return to form by one of the few people in modern music that I would label as a genius. Fifty years and thirty-five albums after the release of "Bob Dylan," and he can still come up with a batch of fresh, surprising, satisfying songs ... and that is quite an acheivement.
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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953
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