What? An album people have actually heard of?! I never said that only obscure music is good--more, I like to hope that just because an artist or album isn't well known doesn't necessarily mean it's because they're bad (though some definitely are). And naturally, the opposite goes for some extremely popular artists!
Another Side of Bob Dylan sits smack in the middle of one of the greatest runs of great albums in history--after The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and The Times They Are A-Changin', and right before Bringing It All Back Home--so it's usually appraised quite highly, perhaps by association. In my opinion, the album can be fairly assessed as a minor but artistically necessary entry in an extremely fertile artistic period.
Whether the title is intentional or more of a record label decision, it's pretty apt--here Dylan deliberately distances himself from the mantle of neo-folk protest king that his previous two albums earned him--only the oblique "Chimes of Freedom" could be remotely linked with protest music, while "My Back Pages" (the undisputed best song of the set) denies the self-serious sanctimoniousness of his earlier material with lush imagery and an immortal refrain. On other songs ("All I Really Want to Do," "It Ain't Me Babe") it seems he'd rather not be held responsible for anything at all!
So, in absence of an overarching social theme, what does Dylan offer as a replacement? Well, in some ways not much--when it comes to new ideas, Another Side is a pretty slight. In some ways, it borrows too heavily from Freewheelin'; "Motorpsycho Nightmare" and "I Shall Be Free no. 10" attempt (with mixed results) to recapture the wry wit of his second album's comic relief, while "I Don't Believe You" and "To Ramona" attempt to recapture some of the tongue-in-cheek romantic flavor that was absent on Times They Are A-Changin'. "Spanish Harlem Incident" and "Black Crow Blues" are pretty bland, while the long and uncomfortable "Ballad in Plain D" (recounting the dissolution of his relationship with Suze Rotolo) forays almost bizarrely into confessional singer/songwriter territory in a way that Dylan would purposely avoid until Blood On The Tracks. For someone whose personality and music was deliberately assembled as a dazzling patchwork of prevarications and theft, the song's directness is at once fascinating and a bit repulsive as it conveys firsthand the consequences of such a persona. In any case, it's more of a curiosity compared with what most people love about Dylan from this era.
Probably the best thing this album has going for itself is Dylan's pop instincts--though they rarely deal with weighty subjects, there are a healthy handful of great-to-classic songs that plenty of other artists had hits with. Though it's short on revelation, Another Side is an amicable listen for the warmth of Dylan's personality and its laid-back mood--another great thing about Dylan from this period. A lot is made about his transition from acoustic "folk" to electric rock on the following album, but what's more striking to me is the pre-flowering of his surrealist words. The change is hinted at on "Chimes of Freedom" and "My Back Pages," but it's nothing compared with what would come on songs like "Gates of Eden" and "It's Alright Ma" and later glories. Ironically, though he usually manages to toss in some humorous throwaways, Dylan's later success can arguably be attributed to his return to serious subject matter--he just happened to drop the black-and-white moral stance and approach the topics from a much more artistically-developed and open-ended angle. I guess Another Side can be viewed as the shrugging off of the shackles that was necessary for his continued artistic development.
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