Bob Dylan – Looks Like I’m Moving Review

Few audience members would have predicted more original material from Bob Dylan. Around the 2019 tour was a general acceptance of a new routine for the veteran performer. He would share his greatest hits and a few contemporary classics on stage, but his work in the studio was dedicated to exorcising the ghosts of the great American Songbook. So be it, many believed, until Rough and Rowdy Ways dragged Dylan back into original material. What a return it was. There is much to be said for the Winter 2019 tour captured on Looks Like I’m Moving, but most crucial of all is the sense that it was the endpoint of developing the tone which would mark his studio album the year after. You can hear those changes to the instrumental form take hold, the familiar selections from the 2021 tour highlighted by this unofficial compilation.  

Opener Beyond Here Lies Nothing remains a delightful inclusion not just of this compilation but of the wider Dylan sets. We can only hope it returns. A criminally underrated album, a desperately underperformed song which needs those baby grand piano flourishes found on the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour. Looks Like I’m Moving compiles songs which seem to have influenced the tone of Dylan’s thirty-ninth studio album. When I Paint My Masterpiece is dragged out into a piano-led instrumental and sounds as delightful as it does in that permanent slot on the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour. Songs which have not featured on that tour, or the Outlaw Music Festival break with Willie Nelson, sound just as important to the sound which has now defined Dylan for half a decade. Lenny Bruce may seem like a surprise inclusion, but the Shot of Love song is a chance for Dylan to gain a steadier understanding of how those longer, spoken-word ballads would develop.  

Crucially, though, these versions are wildly different to what would follow. Around this time was a period when Dylan was obsessed with classic songs from his youth. He provided three albums of covers, and the chance of integrating those into his set was slim. Slimmer still was a chance to hear original music from the songwriter. Yet part of the charm to Looks Like I’m Moving and the tour around this time was hearing the different styles Dylan could offer his greatest hits and most moving tracks. Girl from the North Country and Not Dark Yet are brilliant additions to the set, and it must be admitted, even the often lacklustre Early Roman Kings sounds solid on its showing in Muncie, Indiana. But the classics prevail, with Ballad of a Thin Man given a swaggering, staggering vocal drawl from Dylan.  

He is backed across all these songs by the subtle yet certain playing of a band preparing to adapt their sounds once more. Improvised in parts, surely, and holding firm with this drifting tone. Dylan’s backing instrumentals are a contradiction of intricacies and simpler tones. It is the best part of Looks Like I’m Moving, outside of Dylan’s performances and choice of songs. Long and Wasted Years and Not Dark Yet have an extra layer to them in these twilight years. The former was a nod to those most recent contemporary works, the latter a performance which embodies the thrills which Dylan reconnected with on Time Out of Mind. Dylan was sifting through his discography, looking for those moments which had inspired his earlier works. You can hear it all play out on Looks Like I’m Moving, a very strong compilation.