CD: Christmas in the Heart by Bob Dylan

CHRISTMAS IN THE HEART

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Say they trawled skid row, found a shambling derelict and hauled him into the studio to sing a bunch of hokey Christmas standards.

Say that, ruined voice and all, the hobo sang out with something approaching joy, empowered perhaps by a reconnection to the traditions of his own lost boyhood, or maybe a sense that these are sanctified songs that anybody, damn it, has a right to sing as best they can.

Maybe then, you'd have an album like this. Not that there are many albums like this.

Lots of people were initially suspicious when Bob Dylan's company announced that after his recent string of four late-career hit albums and a sense of renewed artistic vigour, their man was going to don a cultural cardigan and record a really, really traditional Christmas album.

People suspected either something insincere – a sneering in-joke – or just a shockingly lazy cash-in.

That the profits were to go to a feed-the-homeless charity put a halo of sorts over the project, but jeeze ... those old enough to remember the sheer awfulness of his Self Portrait album, or that flaccid live album with the Grateful Dead, might have been steeling themselves for a new contender as Worst Dylan Album Ever.

What we shouldn't forget is that Dylan is a musicologist.

On top of his relentless performing, his occasional autobiographical writing, his acting, his painting, this raggedy renaissance man has also been hosting his Theme Time Radio Hour, beavering deep into his country's musical heritage.

Dylan does his best to honour these songs.

His best isn't, technically, especially good.

Nobody was expecting him to sound like Perry Como, but maybe, we told ourselves, he might do a plausible Burl Ives.

Well, no. It's not even out-there-ugly like Tom Waits' magnificently ravaged voice. And you won't find the bedraggled beauty of the Pogues' Fairytale of New York.

Rather, Dylan's growling, wheezing and chuckling performances are endearing. Companionable.

The inadequacies of the singing invite the listener to sing along and help an old-timer out.

There's something touching about such a careworn voice having a crack at such honest, maybe naive sentiment.

Of course, the imp in Dylan just couldn't have done the whole thing straight. It's just not in him.

So the madly fast polka Must Be Santa, an oddity enough in its own terms, now contains a fleeting joke – not all of us could name all Santa's reindeer any more, but I'm pretty sure they should be the likes of Dasher, Dancer Prancer and Vixen, not Kennedy, Clinton, Bush and Nixon.

Bob Dylan has recorded a very merry album.

- © Fairfax NZ News