Bob Dylan – Frozen Traffic Review

Bob Dylan’s end-of-the-year showcase has become a thing of legend for fans. His most recent trip to Europe concluded with time to spare for Christmas, but little else. A final show at the 3Arena in Dublin, Ireland, marked the conclusion of Dylan’s last year on the road with Rough and Rowdy Ways. It has become an intermittent theme of the always active music legend. Frozen Traffic, a welcome bootleg of the 2006 touring days, features nothing but songs Dylan performed in the final days of a monumental year. He would release Modern Times, bring fan favourites back to the stage, and sound gruff while he did this tour. He doesn’t let that stop him from performing the likes of Absolutely Sweet Marie and Ballad of Hollis Brown, though. Whether he should or not is a different question. Frozen Traffic is a solid bootleg, summarising the last days of the 2006 tour well.  

This is as close to a so-called hits tour as Dylan has gotten in recent years. He sounded relatively happy to be performing the likes of Simple Twist of Fate, Maggie’s Farm, and A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. Each sounds solid enough on this tour, though the instrumental style sounds a bit vapid. Part of that can be put down to the tape recording quality but a bulk of the songs featured on Frozen Traffic sound more like a jumble, with Dylan staggering to the end of the song as best he can before throwing in a harmonica solo that’ll have a handful of people in the crowd cheer. It’s a nice mixture of those moments and a few fantastic performances. Absolutely Sweet Marie is a representation of both such sides to Dylan. Instrumentally, there’s a break which has the band fall into a better groove, and Dylan sounds solid in some sections of the song. It’s not wholly consistent, though, and it does struggle along a little too much. There’s still reason to listen to Frozen Traffic, make no mistake about it.  

A performance of Cat’s in the Well early on into this compilation is fantastic. That’s the clinical instrumental and volatile vocal blur that listeners will look for. A real thrill ride and the big blowout at the end, timed nicely with the crowd cheering on the band, is one of those subtle live touches that come with an endless set of performances. It’s what the group on stage and those in the crowd can feed off. Many will say there is little interaction between Dylan and his fans, but there are performances where the appreciation and thrill of playing is enough to connect. Words mean nothing to those moved by this song or that moment. It’s an emotional reaction which Frozen Traffic conjures, despite somewhat shaky performances. Being in the crowd, moved by the moment, that’s what only the best can do and even with a tame Shooting Star performance, Dylan is capable.  

Frozen Traffic is a welcome compilation, even with those on-stage shortcomings. Search through the fourteen-song set and you find the likes of Not Dark Yet, Summer Days, and a rather moving rendition of ‘Til I Fell in Love With You. Mesmerising and delicate do not always mean subtle and soft. Dylan has proven he can work with an emotionally cool experience even with a gruff voice. He would improve these vocal charms over the next two decades and sounds remarkable in modern times. But the tour for Modern Times is Dylan at a time when he was arguably rolling out the hits and staying on the road for the sake of it. Still time for exceptional performances, but you would be hard-pressed to find all that many brilliant renditions in this showcase. That Ballad of a Thin Man is a scorcher, but much of the songs around it is billed on the longevity, rather than the specific performance.