#patrick sansone

Album Review: Emma Swift - Blonde on the Tracks

In compiling eight Bob Dylan songs for Blonde on the Tracks, Emma Swift made the odd choice of including “I Contain Multitudes.”

The track from 2020’s Rough and Rowdy Ways is not only unfamiliar to many, it’s one of very few Dylan songs that’s not particularly ripe for interpretation. As such, it’s the single low point on an otherwise-charming collection from the honey-throated vocalist, whose voice makes for an extra-weepy, rim-shot-drums-and-steel-guitar reading of “Going, Going Gone.”

Swift leaves Dylan’s lyrics, including pronouns, in place, making “The Man in Me” come off as a sort of weird love triangle against a Band-y arrangement of stacked harmonies, acoustic guitar, rhythm section, piano and organ.

Take a woman like you/to get through to the man in me, she sings without a hint of anything strange going on.

With partner Robyn Hitchcock on guitar and Wilco’s Patrick Sansone in the producer’s chair playing multiple instruments, Swift does a Byrdsian number on “Queen Jane Approximately,” adds a Laurel Canyon spin to “One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)” and wrings every minute - in this case 12 of them - out of the vinyl-record-side-long “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.”

Grade card: Emma Swift - Blonde on the Tracks - B