Dylan's latest surprise move has been to release a holiday album, Christmas in the Heart. But, unsurprisingly, at the Liacouras he didn't do any songs from it at all, or even mention its existence. He did dip into his other 2009 release, Together Through Life, however. He essayed both the moody, Otis Rush-derived "Beyond Here Lies Nothin' " to memorable effect, and he did the relative throwaway "Jolene," which was sandwiched between the crowd-pleasing encores of "Like a Rolling Stone" and "All Along the Watchtower."
Though the nearly two-hour show wasn't heavy on new material, Dylan's performance wasn't preoccupied with looking back, either.
Sure, the grizzled, gravelly voiced ur-singer-songwriter came out on stage - following the standard cheeky introduction that tags him as "the poet laureate of rock and roll" - to the sneering Blonde on Blonde classic "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again."
But more than half of the 17-song set was dedicated to latter-day material, dating forward from 1989's Oh Mercy, represented with "Man in the Long Black Coat," which, in typical Dylan fashion, imbued heartbreak with the fatalistic power of myth.
And more to the point - and as is always the case on the Neverending Tour, which finds the troubadour in Fairfax, Va., tonight - the songs Dylan performs from his vast catalog are subject to nightly reinvention. The results of that native restlessness that has allowed Dylan to keep hiding in plain sight for 41/2 decades, though, can be mixed.
On Monday, the gentle love song "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," which was one of only two songs on which Dylan played guitar, got a melodic reworking that conveyed a fresh tenderness.
