“With
Bringing It All Back Home, he exploded the boundaries, producing an album of
boundless imagination and skill. And it's not just that he went electric,
either, rocking hard on "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "Maggie's
Farm," and "Outlaw Blues"; it's that he's exploding with
imagination throughout the record. After all, the music on its second side --
the nominal folk songs -- derive from the same vantage point as the rockers,
leaving traditional folk concerns behind and delving deep into the personal.
And this isn't just introspection, either, since the surreal paranoia on
"It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" and the whimsical poetry of
"Mr. Tambourine Man" are individual, yet not personal. And that's
just the tip of the iceberg, really, as he writes uncommonly beautiful love
songs ("She Belongs to Me," "Love Minus Zero/No Limit")
that sit alongside uncommonly funny fantasias ("On the Road Again," "Bob
Dylan's 115th Dream"). This is the point where Dylan eclipses any
conventional sense of folk and rewrites the rules of rock, making it safe for
personal expression and poetry, not only making words mean as much as the
music, but making the music an extension of the words. A truly remarkable
album. “
-
Stephen Thomas Erlewine, allmusic.com
“It's
very complicated to play with electricity," Dylan said in the summer of
1965. "You're dealing with other people. . . . Most people who don't like
rock & roll can't relate to other people." But on Side One of this
pioneering album, Dylan amplifies his cryptic, confrontational songwriting with
guitar lightning and galloping drums. "Subterranean Homesick Blues"
and "Maggie's Farm" are loud, caustic and funny as hell. Dylan
returns to solo acoustic guitar on the four superb songs on Side Two, including
the scabrous "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" and the closing
ballad, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," arguably his finest, most
affectionate song of dismissal.
-
Rolling
Stone Magazine
“Musically,
Bringing it All Back Home is dissimilar to most of Bob Dylan’s other albums.
There is electric guitar, there is harmonica, and there is pessimistic
vulgarity. While he was liked for the soothing acoustic guitar and thoughtful
lyrics that provoke images of beauty and euphoria, Dylan gets down and dirty
for a battle royal with America on this album. Nice shocker for all those quiet
Dylan listeners out there. He strums his acoustic throughout the whole album,
though. It wouldn’t be his music without the acoustic. But the big new addition
to his music is the bluesy electric guitar with the deep delta blues harmonica
technique. So how different is this album from other Dylan stuff? Pretty
different, but it’s crazy enough to work and doesn’t sound like anyone else but
Bob Dylan. The song structures are simplistic, and his lyrics are sardonic, but
his voice and emotions further the satirical state of the album. His lyrical
structures rhyme quite often and he has this nasal honk in his voice that is
just a sonic hyperbole for freedom of speech.”
-
Sputnickmusic.com
“Bringing It
All Back Home was a milestone for Dylan, but I still have some serious problems
with this album. It seems too schizophrenic and lacking coherency. One side
seems to be the "frivilous side" and the other the "serious
side". Side two, the "serious side", almost seems as if it were
made up from outtakes from the previous album, although this is obviously not
so. Side one, the "frivilous side", is Dylan rocking out for the
first time (ok, not really the first time if you consider that he used a
backing group for the Freewheelin' sessions
back in '62) and singing a lot of songs that don't appear to carry any deep
hidden meanings (deceptively so, as it turns out). I would rather have the
songs mixed up a little better so that the electric songs were interspersed
with the acoustic, but I guess that's a small complaint compared to the
greatness of the album.”
-
Punkhart.com
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Released
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March 27, 1965
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Recorded
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Columbia Recording Studios, New York City January 13–15, 1965
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Length
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47:23
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