Bob Dylan has premiered the official video over at Rolling Stone's website for new single "Duquesne Whistle," the first single to be taken from the veteran songwriter's upcoming LP, "Tempest," the 35th studio album of Dylan's long and influential career, is due for release on September 11, fifty years and six months after the commencement of his recoding career. Given that 'The Tempest' was Shakespeare's final play, and we know that Dylan is a student of the Bard, could this be the 71-year-old artist's way of telling us that with this record he's calling it quits?The jaunty "Duquesne Whistle," begins in the middle of a scene, like the fade-in in a classic Western. The music starts faintly, as if in a vintage pleasure palace, with the band playing rock and roll ragtime off in the corner. Dylan himself unleashes the rubbery guitar chord change that repeats for the rest of the song, sounding just like a locomotive blast. The real story unfolds through its delicious rhythms and in that unshakeable whistle and the loquacious vivaciousness of Dylan's voice. Complete with jamming organ and slick guitar licks, the whistle threatens "to blow my blues away."
The acerbic, goofy video, is an admirably opaque thing from Aussie director Nash Edgerton, sees Dylan as the leader of a hilariously Lynchian-gang of misfits, strolling the streets of Los Angeles at night with menace in their eyes, while a seemingly unconnected storyline about a handsomely scruffy young man trying desperately to pick up cute, strange girl, but he can never keep from getting pepper sprayed, or put in jail, or receiving a Tarantino-esque beating, turns out really, really badly takes place during the day.
It opens a handsomely scruffy young man is waiting for the object of his affections, a Zooey Deschanel type, as she emerges from a building. He follows her down the street, steals a red rose from a flower vendor and accosts her at her mid-'70s AMC Gremlin. Instead of being charmed by the attention, she maces the sucker and speeds off. The mating ritual repeats itself the next day, but this time the florist whistles for the cops. However, in his attempt to escape, he tries to create a stumbling block for the fuzz by throwing a ladder down to the ground without realizing that a man was perched on the ladder. It's hard to recall the last time we've seen a video this dark and contradictory to the song's tone, while the whole thing is pretty ridiculous and great.
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