Shadows In the Night

Pitchfork 6.2/10 As the album progresses, the songs sound more and more emotionally muted, as though this style of American pop songwriting was good only for providing ruminative ambience rather than sophisticated humor, feisty insight, or infectious rhythm.

A.V. Club B Each of the tracks on this record carries a melancholy bent that Dylan wraps himself in. The weight of his experience is present in every line, every vocal tic, and every exhale.

NME 3/5 It's all wildly self-indulgent, but pleasant enough.

The Line of Best Fit 8/10 By power-hosing these standards clean of the string-soaked syrup they've been drowning in for years, the songs are allowed to breathe.

Evening Standard 3/5 No one song stands out — it’s uniformly sleepy and muted, and rather dull. Still, it’s intriguing to hear the composer of so many standards of his own sounding reverent next to the Great American Songbook.

Rolling Stone 4/5 Dylan transforms everything on Shadows in the Night — 10 slow-dance covers, mostly romantic standards from the pre-rock era of American popular songwriting — into a barely-there noir of bowed bass and throaty shivers of electric guitar.

The Independent 4/5 The results have a lingering, languid charm, which does, as he suggests, help to liberate the material from the rusting manacles of big-band and cabaret mannerisms.

All Music 4/5 The fact that the feel is so richly idiosyncratic is a testament to just how well he knows these tunes, and these slow, winding arrangements are why Shadows in the Night feels unexpectedly resonant: it's a testament to how deeply Dylan sees himself in these old songs.

Mojo 5/5 This extraordinary record is more refreshing burst than last gasp and its timelessness speaks more to life than death.

The Observer 4/5 The pace of Shadows… doesn’t vary from a stately waltz time, even on the 4/4 tracks. The treatments are of a piece: Dylan’s lived-in croon to the fore, breathing close to the mic as his heroically discreet band swoon and groan around him.

Slant 3.5/5 Rather than settle for one more cheap jukebox tour through well-worn material, Shadows in the Night deepens the innate sorrow of these old tunes by establishing them on a long, irregular continuum, possessing the same inherent mutability as the folk songs of Dylan's early days.

Pop Matters 8/10 Shadows in the Night is clearly an act of love and honor.

The Guardian 5/5 Shadows in the Night works as an unalloyed pleasure, rather than a research project. It may be the most straightforwardly enjoyable album Dylan’s made since Time Out of Mind.

Spectrum Culture 50% It’s a strong concept, but he doesn’t quite pull it off.

The Telegraph 5/5 Some will scoff, but imagine a beloved grandfather at a family gathering singing ballads of love and yearning from his lost youth, and you will get some idea of the power of this extraordinary record.

The Irish Times 5/5 Rarely has Dylan sounded so vulnerable, so revealing as in this masterclass of nuance and interpretation.