This album has two ingredients all the other Dylan albums lack: Emmylou Harris singing back-up vocals and Scarlet Rivera playing the violin. I love all of Dylan's albums, but this is my favorite of all time, mainly b/c the addition of emmylou and scarlet make this so much different (but still as good) than his other albums. The songs have a melancholic sound that isn't duplicated this well on any of the others. This album has another unique feature, Dylan co-wrote some songs with famed writer Jaques Levy. One thing that will catch your ear is that Emmylou's vocals give the songs haunting overtones. Add in the violin and its just an amazing sound. The songs I like the best are "hurricane," which is a great upbeat story song, "One more Cup of Coffee," and "Oh Sister" both which are slower and eerie. Also "Joey" an 11 minute ballad about mobster Joey Gallo's death. And it ends with "Sara" which he wrote for his wife (ex?). I didn't know what to expect when I bought this CD, but I was in no way disappointed.

Over and over, I hear that phrase, "best Dylan album since Blood on the Tracks" used to describe new Dylan albums. I guess those people haven't heard "Desire", which is arguably rather better than "Blood on the Tracks", and came out a year later. "One More Cup of coffee"? "Sara"? "oh, Sister"? Scarlet Rivera's violin? Emmylou?

I have all of Dylan's albums. This is the best one ever, and considering just how good some of those other albums were, that is something very good indeed. Enjoy.

Like a time capsule, Desire contains the spirit of a hopeful past. Recorded in July and October 1975 and released in January 1976, Desire is the final third of Dylan's mid-1970s trilogy, whose other parts are Planet Waves (1974) and Blood on the Tracks (1975). Although falling short of the earlier two albums' near perfection, Desire has some of Dylan's most engaging and likeable music, and his most touching love song, "Sara." In many ways, Desire resembles Planet Waves more than it does Blood on the Tracks. On Blood on the Tracks, the lyrics have primary importance, whereas on Planet Waves and Desire the music is essential in uniting these albums' diverse strands. Dylan on Blood on the Tracks is a soloist with accompaniment, but he collaborates on Planet Waves and Desire with other outstanding artists. The members of The Band join Dylan on Planet Waves in a kind of rock chamber music. On Desire, Dylan shares both songwriting and performance. Jacques Levy is co-author of all but two of the songs, and Scarlet Rivera, on violin, and Emmylou Harris and Ronee Blakley, on vocals, are notable among the musicians who help give this album its unique texture. Both Planet Waves and Desire were recorded in the aftermath of war (the Yom Kippur War for Planet Waves; the Vietnam War for Desire), and share an optimism for a better world that brackets Blood on the Tracks' tragic vision.

The trilogy's narrative progresses from first to second to third person. Dylan sings as an individual on Planet Waves, but on Blood on the Tracks he finds himself caught in a mirror play of relationships gone wrong. On Desire, Dylan adds a third party, the audience, as an integral part of the performance. Dylan pulls us into Desire by reaching outward. The songs on this album are a series of quests and adventures, all of them searches for justice or love. The stories range from a police frame-up in urban America ("Hurricane"), to a romantic idyll in Africa ("Mozambique"), to a fantastic hunt for treasure inside a frozen pyramid by the wayward husband (Dylan) of an Egyptian goddess ("Isis"). In "Black Diamond Bay," Dylan actually becomes an audience member. This song recounts the last hours in the lives of several lonely and isolated hotel guests on a sinking volcanic island. Dylan learns about the catastrophe only in the final stanza, when he hears a fragmentory report by Walter Cronkite on the television news.

The music of Desire varies with its locations and themes. In "One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)," Dylan laments his rejection by a bandit chieftain's beautiful daughter, in a style the poet Allen Ginsberg describes (in his album notes) as "Hebraic cantillation never heard before in U.S. song." The oceanic "Oh, Sister" is hymn-like in its plea for a loving partnership under the fatherhood of God. The accordion in "Joey" (Dom Cortese) evokes the Italian-American background of its real-life protagonist, Joey Gallo, a man "caught between the mob and the men in blue." "Romance in Durango" achieves its Mexican atmosphere through the sound of a Bellzouki 12-string guitar (Vincent Bell), trumpet, accordion and tambourine, as Dylan sings, partly in Spanish, about a killer's flight across the desert with his beloved Magdalena.

The eclectic nature of the album invites us to become a part of its creative process--we do not feel distanced by a single-minded vision of the artist. Hearing its songs allows us to draw our own poetic map of the world.

Two songs on Desire deserve special mention. "Hurricane" tells the true story of African-American middleweight boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, framed for a triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey. Paced like a hard-boiled crime movie, "Hurricane" is both a compelling plea for Carter's freedom and a condemnation of racial prejudice in the American judicial system, "where justice is a game." The song publicized Carter's plight (later, Dylan held two concerts to raise legal defense funds) and helped win Carter a new trial in the fall of 1976.

The jewel of this album is its last song, the inexpressibly poignant "Sara," addressed to Dylan's wife. In an unsentimental but emotional voice, Dylan sings a simple modal melody on top of Scarlet Rivera's haunting violin. The verses are a succession of flashbacks of the Dylans' life together, interspersed by a "Sara, Sara" refrain praising his wife's beauty, kindness, and mystery. Dylan recalls their children, still babies, playing on the beach; Sara in a Jamaican marketplace; himself "staying up for days in the Chelsea Hotel, writing 'Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' for you." He concludes with the words, "don't ever leave me, don't ever go." The song feels transitory, evanescent, in contrast to "Wedding Song" on Planet Waves, where Dylan sings of the eternal verities of their marriage ("I love you more than ever, more than time and more than love").

After recording Desire, Dylan continued his deep audience connection by launching the Rolling Thunder Revue. With an all-star cast headed by Dylan and featuring Joan Baez, the Revue caravaned across the Northeastern states and neighboring parts of Canada (autumn 1975), and then through the South and Southwest (spring 1976). Its unpublicized itinerary was filled with surprise concert dates. From the Desire sessions, Rivera, Blaklee, Rob Stoner (bass), and Howard Wyeth (drums) joined this true people's tour.

But the circumstances that made Desire possible soon disappeared, as the places and people portrayed in many of its songs fell upon harder times. The new nation of Mozambique, whose freedom Desire celebrates, was devastated by a civil war. The old Mexico depicted in "Romance in Durango" became largely a memory following economic globalization and NAFTA. Rubin Carter was convicted in his second trial and not released on parole until 1988. And in 1977, Dylan's marriage to Sara ended in divorce, after which it seems he could no longer follow the same artistic path. Desire marks the completion of a grand cycle of Dylan's career, dating back to his first albums in the early 1960s. His next album, Street Legal (1978), reveals, beneath its "big band" gloss, a dark night of the soul. From Street Legal's first song, the aptly named "Changing of the Guards," we are in a new era.

From the surrealistic paranoia of Highway 61 Revisited to the solemn introspection of Blood On the Tracks, Bob Dylan’s albums as a whole have always had a certain feel or tone. That is why Desire is such an odd duck in the master songwriter’s catalogue. On this 1976 LP, Mr. Dylan journeys all across the musical, lyrical and cultural maps. Desire opens with the fast-paced, socially conscious opus, “Hurricane” and ends with the somber, personal account, “Sara.” In between are many valleys and peaks and some of the most varied material of Mr. Dylan’s career. Like “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright” or “It Ain’t Me Babe,” “One More Cup of Coffee” shows Mr. Dylan’s cunning spitefulness at its best while the following track “Oh, Sister” is the artist at his most sentimental. “Isis,” is a rough-rocking rambler a la “Tangled Up in Blue,” set in country backwaters while “Joey” is a mournful tribute to gangster, Joey Gallo, caked in the grime and ruination of the urban crime. Mr. Dylan even takes turns as unexpected as working with a violinist (Scarlet Rivera) and a cowriter (Jacques Levy).

Its lack of direction may have been Desire’s downfall if not for the fact that the songs, evaluated on their own merits, are generally superb. There are only two moments where Mr. Dylan’s experimentation goes amiss: “Mozambique,” which features lyrics that read like a travel brochure and “Romance in Durango,” which has an almost stereotypically South American flavor. But while zigging and zagging across Desire, Mr. Dylan, for the most part, maintains the gorgeous melodies, sharp wit and magnificent story telling we have come to expect from him. Some of these songs, such as “Hurricane,” “Isis” and “Sara,” even have the right to be called classics. The many instances in which the experimentation of the eclectic Desire fly are undoubtably worth the price of the few that flutter.

I'm tempted to give this wonderful album five stars on the strenght of "Oh Sister", "Sara" and the folk/rock ballad "Romance In Durango" alone. But the rest of the album doesn't quite live up to these three collective centerpieces, although both "One More Cup Of Coffee" (which benefits from the vocals of a young Emmylou Harris) and "Black Diamond Bay" are great songs as well, and the rest isn't excactly throwaways either.

But "Oh Sister" and "Durango" in particular are two of the most melodic songs Dylan has ever written, and rarely has he committed such pleasant, expressive and confident vocals to tape as he does on one of the very best songs of his long career, the beautiful "Romance In Durango".
He may have surprised listeners when he crooned "Lay Lady Lay" in a dark baritone back in 1969, but here he sings in his natural tenor voice, and even as nasal as Dylan is, he comes off as a very competent balladeer.

This in one of Dylan's very best (and most accessible) albums, the band is great, the arrangements are beautiful, and the songs shine.
Not to be missed.