This is my favorite acoustic Dylan album. Focusing less explicitly on politics compared to its predecessor, he's at a new songwriting peak here. Songs like "To Ramona" and "My Back Pages" are slow ballads rich with lyrical detail."All I Really Want to Do" is a playful ditty that reverses romantic pop songs, and "Motorpsycho Nightmare" is a hilarious, surreal talking blues song. Much like the early Beatles albums, Dylan's early period sometimes gets relatively (stress: relatively) overlooked compared to the years after he went electric, but he had the presence and gravitas as a songwriter and especially as a vocalist to pull off an album alone. if there's one criticism I have, it's that "Chimes of Freedom" always sounded a bit like a re-write of "The Times They Are A-Changin'." But overall, this is one of the definitive Dylan albums, right down to many of the songs eventually turning up in cover versions by The Byrds.
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