Bob Dylan - Self Portrait [2LP]

Few records in Bob Dylan's catalog have sparked as much argument as Self Portrait, the sprawling 1970 double album that this two-LP reissue brings back into the spotlight.

Arriving after Nashville Skyline, it found Dylan sidestepping the voice-of-a-generation role entirely, filling four sides with country standards, folk songs, pop covers, instrumentals and a handful of originals. Producer Bob Johnston gathered sessions from Nashville and New York, and critics at the time were baffled. Decades later the record has earned a warmer, more curious reappraisal, helped along by the archival digging that followed.

All the Tired Horses opens with a chorus of female voices repeating a single couplet over strings, a hypnotic curveball that sets the tone. Dylan croons his way through Gordon Lightfoot's Early Mornin' Rain and Paul Simon's The Boxer, harmonizing with himself on the latter, while Copper Kettle is a gorgeous, unhurried reading of the old moonshiner's ballad.

Recordings from the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival, cut with The Band, add a looser and rougher edge to the second half of the set, a reminder of how electric he could still be on stage.

It is a playful, oddly tender record, and its refusal to give people what they expected is exactly why so many listeners keep returning to it.