Consumer Guide Album

Bob Dylan: Infidels [Columbia, 1983]
All the wonted care Dylan has put into this album shows--musically, "License to Kill" is the only dud. His distaste for the daughters of Satan has gained complexity of tone--neither dismissive nor vituperative, he addresses women with a solicitousness that's strangely chilling, as if he knows what a self-serving hypocrite he's being, but only subliminally. At times I even feel sorry for him, just as he intends. Nevertheless, this man has turned into a hateful crackpot. Worse than his equation of Jews with Zionists with the Likud or his utterly muddled disquisition on international labor is the ital Hasidism that inspires no less than three superstitious attacks on space travel. God knows (and I use that phrase advisedly) how far off the deep end he'll go if John Glenn becomes president. B-