A Film Canon

Slow Train Coming is the finest of Dylan's three evangelical albums, largely because it understands evangelism as a stylistic as much as a theological position. Throughout his career, Dylan has adopted a prophetic, apocalyptic tone, both before his conversion and after his renunciation, and hearing him finally fit that tone to traditional biblical content has something of the thrill that might be imagined to accompany hearing one of the Old Testament prophets actually speak, rather than simply reading their words or hearing them spoken by surrogates. In that sense, it feels like Dylan has been waiting his whole career to sing some of these songs - especially 'Precious Angel', whose extraordinary combination of Knopfleresque soft rock and violent, apocalyptic lyrics ("Can they imagine the darkness/That will come from on high/When men will beg God to kill them/But they won't be able to die?") culminates with perhaps Dylan's finest, most panoramic application of his peculiar nexus between speech and song to the simultaneously direct and melodic register of the prophet: "There's fire in your eyes, girl/So let us not be enticed/On the way out of Egypt, through Ethiopia/To the judgement hall of Christ." This direct, "I'm talking to you, Mr." pervades the entire album, producing a peculiarly confessional evangelism that is both titillating and alienating to the conventional Dylan fan, and perhaps finds its most surreal expression in the magnificent opener, "Gotta Serve Somebody", where he really 'introduces' himself for the first time: "You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy/You may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy". That said, there's enough of the bluesy sound of Dylan's earlier recordings to retain that traditional fanbase, particularly on the title track, which provides a compelling reinvention of Dylan's characteristic railroad backdrop.