It's traditional to bemoan the decline of Bob Dylan as he drags his travelling circus around every city in the world, all the time, for evermore. He certainly cuts an odd figure tonight as he hunches, stage-left, over an electric piano in a jacket that appears to be two sizes too small for him, with the arms of another, two sizes too big, carelessly attached to it. When he eventually half-dances, half-totters to the front of the stage to face us, he reels around with his fingers pointed out at angles, like a gunslinger staggering after taking his last bullet. He could be reliving that one decent movie performance in Pat Garret And Billy The Kid or just awkward about the prospect of confronting another adoring mass. There's even some suggestion that this is in fact humour, Dylan-style.
It doesn't really matter a bit because throughout this rare show in the relatively intimate confines of the Brixton Academy, Dylan does all his talking through the music. As ever, it's as confusing as the beat poetry that he was given to scribbling on the sleeves of his classic 60s albums but, crucially, most of it is shot through with the elusive qualities that make this back catalogue one of the most precious artefacts of the 20th Century.
Sets for the four London dates played in the last week have steered a messy trajectory through those back pages and tonight's openers confound all speculators. 'The Wicked Messenger', from 67's sonically under-nourished 'John Wesley Harding' and the rarely played 'Yea Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread' kick things off. Odd choices but he's in far better voice than you tend to allow yourself to imagine possible at this stage of the game, backed by a steely blues band perfect for Mike Bloomfield-era tracks like 'Highway 61 Revisited' and 'Like A Rolling Stone'. So we also get blues-birthed tracks from 'Love And Theft' - 'Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum', 'Honest With Me' and a run-through of 'Summer Days', clearly more fun for the band than crowd.
'Tangled Up In Blue' though, is what really gets things started. Played with an uncharacteristic sympathy for the recorded version (at least in the warm acoustic chords that anchor the song) it remains a revelation, quite obviously one of the greatest stories ever told in song. Dylan virtually raps the vivid colours of the tale in a style befitting of a man often credited with a hand in the birth of hip-hop. Unsurprisingly, it's the first and last time that he makes a concession to anything as conventional as a recorded version.
The infamous 'versioning' of his career in concert has infuriated casual fans for years but it's hard to argue with this relentless quest for sonic rebirth when he plays acoustic versions of 'Boots Of Spanish Leather' and 'The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll' like those that come next. Rich, warm and joyfully alive - and graced with two of the highlights of tonight's many fine harmonica solos - both are given a makeover that bears little resemblance to the songs of the angry, righteous 21-year-old that recorded them. And whilst it suits the yearning of the former, it's about as appropriate as sweet nothings whispered at a funeral when applied to the raging 'Hattie Carroll' - a contradiction yet again because it sounds magnificent. On the perverse ever-circling globe inhabited by Dylan all this stuff doubtless makes perfect sense, we can simply be grateful that he's not chopping the songs up and casually tossing the pieces into the crowd.
Astonishingly, the old curmudgeon even manages to save the best for last, closing with a monumental 'Like A Rolling Stone' and Hendrix-inflected 'All Along The Watchtower'. As a parting shot it leaves no question marks hanging over the often-perplexing question of just why it is that Dylan's painfully unpredictable and often bitterly disappointing live shows keep them coming back for more. Because sometimes this happens and it cuts through all the contradiction and obfuscation of this travelling circus a like shot ringing back through all music to one of its many year zeros. Gunslinger indeed.
