Album: Barb Jungr, Man in the Long Black Coat (Linn)

A compilation of Dylan covers from various stages of her career, freshened up with four new recordings, Man in the Long Black Coat mines Barb Jungr's fascination with the septuagenarian troubadour with variable results.

The rushed "The Times They Are a-Changin'" and ill-judged reggae version of "Just Like a Woman" don't work, but elsewhere her deconstructed jazz takes on "Blind Willie McTell" and "High Water" allow new slants to seep into the songs, while the abstracted arrangement of "Like a Rolling Stone" is effective in evoking the drifting sensibility being criticised. Likewise, the waltz-time title-track has an apt fatalism about it, while the mbira thumb-piano at the heart of "Ballad of Hollis Brown" has the quietly demented tone appropriate to the poor farmer's deepening madness.

DOWNLOAD THIS Like a Rolling Stone; Man in the Long Black Coat; High Water; Ballad of Hollis Brown