It's Not Spite

Really, it's not. Neither is that Bob Dylan wisely wrote a song called "Queen Jane Approximately," quite probably foreseeing this Death Match.

I really did try to give Laser Guided Melodies every advantage, in part since I thought it would prove what a fair-minded person I am if I were to advance Jeff's #1 choice after he pitched mine. Not only do I want to look fair-minded, though--I'd also like to be that way, which is why I listened to the Spiritualized album for all its best points, just as I read the papers of students who pester me repeatedly about when I'm turning back papers with the greatest possible charity as a guard against any subconscious desire to punish them for their nagging. And with Laser Guided Melodies, unlike at least a few of the papers I try to receive in great charity, finding the good bits was not hard work. I have been fond of this album for a long time, in fact. It comes stocked with plenty of beauties to latch on to. My favorite track, this listen as others, was "200 Bars," but the whole record has a lovely, limpid energy. It repeats musical phrases but does so with different intensities, and listens, all told, like an unaccountably beautiful dream--unaccountably even in the sense that you can't remember it in any narrative detail after it's over.

I, however, am a sucker for narrative detail, and that's probably why I'm choosing Highway 61 Revisited over Laser Guided Melodies. Even after you take off points for the paisley oil spill that Dylan's wearing in the guise of a shirt or jacket on its cover, this album is tops. It's populated with all sorts of odd characters, not all of whom even warrant a song of their own, and the lyrics distract you from whatever else you happen to be doing at the time with their wry jokes and backhand tenderness and accomplished rhymes ("plastic" and "drastic," especially, struck me this time around). By the same token, though I'm less handy at describing this, the music itself has more texture. Listening to its snags--its honky-tonk bits and the instrument that sounds like (and may be) a party favor at the beginning of the song"Highway 61" and the wheezy laugh that sneaks into the vocals at one point and the ways the harmonica earns that old moniker "mouth organ" when you hear it in this context--all that is, for me, more satisfying than listening to the silken atmosphere that Spiritualized offers.

So, the short version: Highway 61 wins.