Verve
BETTYE LAVETTE - Things Have Changed 2LP
$49.95
An album of Bob Dylan covers drawing on a variety of periods in his career, though notably not much from his major 60s period--nor from his 1975 masterpiece, Blood on the Tracks. The results are fantastic.
It's not just that Dylan's lyrics are a treasure--everybody knows that. It's that the band cooks up some imaginative, diverse, and thoroughly enjoyable reinterpretations, and Lavette tweaks lyrics to suit whatever she feels like saying.
Most stirringly, she transforms Dylan's beautiful 1964 love song "Mama You Been on My Mind" into an expression of longing for her deceased mother, and remorse for having mistreated her.