Cover versions of Bob Dylan songs are legion but commonly lacklustre, moving the bard’s label to run an ad campaign claiming “No one sings Dylan like Dylan”. Maybe – even Bob can’t sing Dylan these days – but soul queen Bettye LaVette, her pipes intact at 72, brings a slinky ferocity to her Dylan covers album that, together with arrangements from an ace studio team, transforms its dozen songs.
LaVette’s revival over the past decade has been built on covers albums, beginning with 2005’s all-woman I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise, before which came a hit-and-miss career on the soul scene and a wild life (sleeping with Otis, tripping with Bootsy). An all-Dylan album wasn’t her idea but she warmed to the songs, mostly from Dylan’s later years, where she found “prose rather than poetry”. She brings vehemence to the world-weary title track (theme to The Wonder Boys), and turns Mama, You Been On My Mind from mournful folk into a sensual rap, and stalks spookily through Ain’t Talkin’. Most startling is The Times They Are a-Changin’, alchemised from Oakie singalong to menacing blues. “He’s always angry about something, and when black women get angry they cuss,” says LaVette, an intense, mesmerising presence throughout.
