Blue Raincoat – Red Flags & Flying Monkeys (Songs by Dylan, Cohen & Neil Young) (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Blue Raincoat – Red Flags & Flying Monkeys (Songs by Dylan, Cohen & Neil Young) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 57:05 minutes | 595 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Comedia

If you’re going to cover anyone you may as well aim high, and that is what Blue Raincoat (or Blå Regnrock to give them their original Swedish name before they decided to appeal to an international audience) have done with this album which reprises work by Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Neil Young. You can’t aspire much higher than that.

The trio comprises Gunnel Nornholm, Dan Arvefjord, and Mats Burman

I’m taking a punt here that they took their name from Cohen’s ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’. They’ve established themselves through live shows in Sweden in which they interpret those three artists predominately.

They’ve just re-released a 2019 album, ‘Red flags and flying monkeys’ which was preceded by a single version of Dylan’s gospel prayer ‘Ring Them Bells’ which also features on the album.

The album title intrigued me as well. It seems the term ‘flying monkeys’ is another way of saying ‘abuse by proxy’ or having someone else do the bidding of a narcissist. You learn something every day. I’m not really sure though how that relates to the selected tracks (to all of them, some of them, none of them)? I’d encourage them to be a little more forthcoming and transparent on that.

On this album they’ve covered a lot of Dylan’s work, nine songs altogether including the rarely heard ‘Tell Ol ‘Bill’, which was written by Dylan for the film North Country with Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand (2005); also two tracks from Cohen, and one from Neil Young.

It’s often hard to select a single track from an album and I’ll be honest about it, if, say, ‘Suzanne’ or ‘Bird on the wire’ or ‘Hallelujah’ had been on the album, or ‘Subterranean homesick blues’, ‘Blowin’ in the wind’ or ‘A hard rain’s a gonna fall’ I would probably have gone for all of them.

Tracklist:

01. Blue Raincoat – Avalanche / Who by Fire (Medley) (05:19)
02. Blue Raincoat – Trying to Get to Heaven (04:00)
03. Blue Raincoat – Workingman’s Blues #2 (05:44)
04. Blue Raincoat – Born in Time (03:08)
05. Blue Raincoat – Tell Ol’ Bill (06:11)
06. Blue Raincoat – I and I (05:04)
07. Blue Raincoat – Lovesick (04:28)
08. Blue Raincoat – Mississippi (04:51)
09. Blue Raincoat – Ring Them Bells (03:11)
10. Blue Raincoat – Changing of the Guards (05:58)
11. Blue Raincoat – No Wonder (04:30)
12. Blue Raincoat – Here It Is (04:39)

Download: