![]() ![]() Most of the tracks here justify their inclusion, with some exceptions. Thankfully, this isn’t the case with Fragments - at least not quite. The problem you run into with extensive box sets like this is that, in the effort to be comprehensive, a lot of inessential material is included. ![]() Yet, when you sit back and hear the final version, you shake your head in wonder because you can appreciate the path that was taken to reach the final version. Each one of these takes would be a perfectly respectable official release. ![]() Click again, and it has settled into a slightly different version of the final cut’s slow, drum-centered strut. First it was treated as a plaintive, minimalist, organ-based first-person address about romantic angst: “Life is short and I think about her a lot/ I can’t say if I want the pain to end or not.” Then you click on a different version, and hear that it has been pushed into a loping, piano-driven groove. I think the final recording is ultimately the best one, a sexy, slow whirl of guitar and drums, but it’s interesting to see how it evolved. Take, for example, the song “Can’t Wait,” of which there are no less than seven versions presented here. His approach is more respectful: he is holding rare minerals carefully up to the light, catching fresh new angles and glints in the process. Unlike some of his contemporaries, he doesn’t treat his material as if he is serving up reheated pizza. Fragments reminds us how obsessive that aesthetic restlessness really is.ĭylan effectively rewrites everything he’s done night after night, song by song, in and out of the concert hall or the studio, testing the internal strength of what might have been written years ago. I’ve always admired Dylan’s resolute reluctance to repeat himself, artistically or otherwise. The package concludes with a compilation of various live versions of tracks on Time Out of Mind. There are also several discs’ worth of (sometimes confusingly labeled) alternate takes, as well as other Dylan tunes from the period that (eventually) appeared elsewhere. It offers a new mix of the record, one that is more in line with Dylan’s initial wishes. 17: Fragments is the handsome and expansive five-disc collection of songs from that session. Also, a word of advice: some records only reveal their true mise en scene when played at night, assisted by the immersion of headphones. Hailed as a return to form when it was first released, the album sounds like the work of someone who had recently come back from the edge after finding a way to keep themselves going. It’s a pretty good line - wry, world-weary, and yet imaginative - that suggests something about his mental state as he was working on 1997’s Time Out of Mind. “I thought I’d be seeing Elvis soon,” joked Bob Dylan after a period of frighteningly ill health in the mid-’90s. 17: Fragment s reminds us how obsessive that aesthetic restlessness really is. I’ve always admired Bob Dylan’s resolute reluctance to repeat himself, artistically or otherwise. ![]()
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