"Blood on the Tracks" isn't the best album of Bob Dylan's long, sinuous career. It's also far from the worst, and with the passing years, this mid-1970s effort seems to have acquired more musical and intellectual heft.
True, there may be some rather slight songs here, including "You're a Big Girl Now" and "Buckets of Rain" -- but only if measured against Dylan warhorses such as "Positively 4th Street" or "Like a Rolling Stone."
Many of the remaining songs are as strong as anything Dylan recorded in the 1960s. "Tangled Up In Blue" chronicles a relationship but also much more -- the wanderings of a man through the workaday world, the American landscape, and the changing nature of his own heart and mind. "Idiot Wind" is a blast of icy rage; it's a wicked but thoroughly engaging song, with unforgettable lines like, "It's a wonder ... you still know how to breathe." And there are several quiet gems, from "Simple Twist of Fate" to "Shelter From the Storm."
Bob Dylan has written, sang and played so much great music that a summation paragraph like this one feels almost absurdly superfluous. But here it is anyhow: At his best, he's incomparable. No other artist has such a voice -- physically, musically, emotionally.