Tim Cumming, writing at The Arts Desk, noted that the "best song performances – " Queen Jane Approximately", " Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and " Tombstone Blues" from Highway 61, a poignant " Forever Young" and a killer version of "What Was it you Wanted", one I may never hear bettered – make this required listening when it comes to later-period Bob, a rare look back in studio conditions, and from a high point in his career". It has always been easy to read stuff into Dylan's work which is not there, but the choice of songs / lyrics for this set do suggest a muted farewell to the faithful, particularly Watching the river flow and When I paint my masterpiece. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. I don't quite know what this album is about other than it was some project that Dylan worked on last year, and I don't know what the musical interlude between each song is about. Murky photos suggest the touring band, with light electric guitar on a bed of acoustics, with occasional accordian and pedal steel.

Drawn from a 2021 live stream with Dylan revisiting his past through the prism of his current sound. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. The film was incredibly well received (check out the two quotes at the top) and the new arrangements plus Dylan’s vocals really shine.It’s particularly impressive on What Was It You Wanted, a cut from 1989’s Oh Mercy that doesn’t seem especially ‘Early’ until you realise it was recorded 27 years into Dylan’s career, and that 34 years have subsequently elapsed. The album's setlist includes 13 original songs handpicked by Dylan for his Shadow Kingdom performance plus the closing instrumental, "Sierra's Theme. Musicians were listed at the end of the livestream – among them Shahzad Ismaily on accordion, and Big Thief’s Buck Meek, though none of Dylan’s road band – but aren’t mentioned in the album credits.

A livestream designed to be ephemeral, to disappear like the smoke from all those cigarettes after a couple of days. A location shrouded in enigma and subterfuge (a Santa Monica soundstage being somewhat less romantic).

Shadow Kingdom showcases Bob Dylan in an intimate setting as he performs songs from his extensive body of work, created especially for this event. The Daily Telegraph 's Neil McCormick gave the album a five out of five star rating and wrote: "What an absolute joy it is, in which the grand old man of songcraft flips through his own back pages with genuine relish, a man in his 80’s revisiting the words of his firebrand youth and finding entirely new meanings there".

Uncut's Damien Love also invoked the work of Lynch, describing Shadow Kingdom as "deeply-felt surrealist-noir-Americana", as well as the paintings in Dylan's own "Beaten Path" series ("a handmade place of lost highways and forgotten barrooms and city lights in smeary rain; of lonely drive-in movie lots and funky diners and juke joints that all seem to float in some unfixed time that could be anywhere from the early-1930s to early tomorrow morning") and the Depression-era boarding-house setting of Conor McPherson's musical play Girl from the North Country. What Bob has done is to go back to key albums in the 60s and 70s, with one title from Oh Mercy from 1989, and re-recorded some less obvious songs. Originally reinterpreted for an exclusive streaming film event, which aired in July 2021, Shadow Kingdom is now available on vinyl and CD for the first time. Shadow Kingdom debuted at number 71 on the Billboard 200 but was the seventh best-selling album in the US during its first week of release based on pure album sales.The old songs and vintage effect might invoke a certain nostalgia, but the juke joint ambience is more Lynchian than neat historic reconstruction, and the songs sound little like they used to do. Sodomsky also discussed director Alma Har'el's "knack for visualizing the haunted barroom production that Dylan has favored on his modern studio albums: As he sings in dusky rooms filled with cigarette smoke and lamplight, mannequins and Western characters, the whole thing takes on a surreal, ghostlike quality". And while the roadhouse rhythm of the touring band is replaced by more of a stealthy cantina sway – lots of accordion and acoustic guitars, no piano or fiddle – there’s a clear affinity. In 1962, however, a Bon Bon “supper club” in Philadelphia was the subject of a court case with Pat Lynn Hackett, a folk singer, accusing the owners of racketeering. It marked his first concert performance since December 2019, and first performance since his universally acclaimed album Rough and Rowdy Ways.