A rush of regret and excess hits Bob Dylan after the release of Self Portrait. What is now a bold experience from an artist who had no interest in being a public plaything was, at the time, a critical disaster. A New Morning Portrait merges the Self Portrait lows with the New Morning highs and figures out the route between the two. What felt like a haphazard rush, this desire to revive the public figure and retract the outstanding, brash statement Self Portrait provided, is charted that much better on this unofficial bootleg. These outtakes shine light on a messy period not just for Dylan but the major players of folk as they transitioned into a new decade. A New Morning Portrait maintains the whirlwind appeal of Self Portrait but has the staggered finesse New Morning would provide. It is the best of both occasions.
Those brief song snippets from Telephone Wire and Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance are brief enough to conjure up the slapped-together feel but they offer a better insight than some of the Self Portrait cuts. All these songs have venomous hindsight to them, a sort of insecurity which would shrivel up and never truly appear again on Dylan’s records of the future. A New Morning Portrait provides a neat link between an album used to sever an interesting image and another made to steady course. George Harrison-featuring Matchbox is a real highlight and the first track which feels anywhere close to complete. Extra cuts of an album poised on implication. Dylan extracts the self and writes about his experiences but wounds a listener through Self Portrait, and it occurs again in A New Morning Portrait.
Country covers and contemporary takes on Mr Bojangles and The Ballad of Ira Hayes are the sort of works which, even with the context of those 1990s cover albums, have little rhyme or reason. There is some sly beauty to this. Not so much tongue-in-cheek as it is a brevity extracted from others of the time. Dylan finds comfort in words which are not his own, and yet they feel like he could have penned them. Confident instrumental stylings make the most of Matchbox and Tomorrow is a Long Time. Those steady, catchy guitar workings are a crucial reason to keep on powering through this collection, as is the rugged percussion holding all these songs together. A New Morning Portrait is a fine line between studio foolishness and early draft work. It is those latter moments which provide the heart of this one.
Where it may feel more like parts of a puzzle, you can hear where Dylan was at this time through Alligator Man alone. A desperate and confident attempt at separating the art from an image of fame, it stands as the best part of A New Morning Portrait. Greed on The Ballad of Ira Hayes and the subtle hints of an exasperated singer trying to make sense of an image he was crowned with underline a sense of purpose for Self Portrait which, at the time of its release, was absent. It still makes for a struggle-worthy listen, but is propped up by a few moments on this compilation. Dive deep into those extra recordings. They are nothing monumental but can be appreciated, the context they add for the times is a neat listen, and it ties together well with a charming Lily of the West cover which sounds unlike anything Dylan would ever record.
