Shot of Love - a forgotten beauty?

I'm discovering Shot of Love. Maybe for the first time.

The Sound on the album, the band puts together on this album, is simply outstanding. It's the best backing band I hear on a Dylan track since, well, maybe the Band.

They are tight, but with an languid flair that comes across sounding assured and laid back at the same time.

This band and this album captures the quintessence of the turn of 80s Dylan - hard driving but with a delicate melodic sensibility woven into the weft.

the opening track is the title song, setting up the album, a sound that's old school and at the same time fresh. Its a simple rocker, and perhaps one reason why listeners who never ventured further consider the album lightweight, lacking the intellectual heft of his pre christian catalogue and clubbed with the latter.
But press on, and Shot of Love earns its place in the Dylan canon; impressing with its breadth of country funk rock to the glorious depth of Every grain of sand.
It isnt perfect. Lenny Bruce draws on the patience but rewards lie further. Like the joy of gems like Watered Down love. A beauty in hiding all of these years. 

'Heart of mine' a love song thats translated into one of the most sublime cover versions of a song, any song, ever.

The elevating touches of the sessions are the quartet of backing vocalists; gospel harmonies wrapping their beseeching tendrils around Dylan's raw but equally beseeching emotion. Passion clothed in velvet. The steady hand of Jim Keltner behind the kit ensures it grooves, with a cast that includes at different points, Fred Tackett, Danny Kortchmar, the inimitable Duck Dunn, Ringo and Ron Wood keeps the music cooking.

The real star of the album, to my ears may be the production of Chuck Plotkin. A legend already for his work on Nebraska, practised in the art of finishing of the rough hewn. Sand paper craft, as finely as needed but without varnish. you can feel the grain of the wood, warm to the touch.
this may not be Dylan's best album, but it definitely deserves listening, much more listening. This may be one of Dylan's best albums.