Description
The New Basement Tapes – Lost On The River – Double Vinyl Record
The New Basement Tapes’ Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes is a rare kind of collaboration—part historical rescue mission, part modern songwriting summit—built from lyrics Bob Dylan wrote in 1967 during the Basement Tapes era and never set to music at the time. Decades later, those words became the spark for an entirely new album, with a one-of-a-kind lineup—Elvis Costello, Marcus Mumford, Jim James, Taylor Goldsmith, and Rhiannon Giddens—writing fresh melodies and arrangements around Dylan’s texts. The result isn’t a tribute record and it doesn’t try to imitate 1967; it sounds like a group of brilliant songwriters stepping into an old room, finding a stack of strange, luminous pages, and turning them into living songs with their own voices, instincts, and emotional fingerprints.
Sonically, the album sits in a warm, rootsy space—folk-rock, country-soul, and back-porch Americana—shot through with the personality of each contributor. You can hear the communal spirit in the performances: harmonies that feel gathered rather than stacked, rhythms that roll with an easy, human push, and arrangements that leave plenty of air for the words to land. But there’s also a sense of cinematic craft, shaped by producer T Bone Burnett, who frames the sessions with earthy texture and a lived-in glow—guitars that ring and creak, percussion that feels hand-played, and subtle instrumental colors that deepen the mood without cluttering it. The album’s strength is its variety: some songs swagger and grin, some drift in dreamlike melancholy, and others hit with sudden urgency, as if the lyrics themselves are steering the band into different emotional weather.
What makes Lost on the River so compelling is the tension between the familiar and the uncanny. Dylan’s words carry that Basement-era mix of humor, prophecy, and sideways storytelling—images that feel like folk tales overheard through a wall—while the modern music brings them into full color, giving them hooks, momentum, and new emotional angles. It’s a record that rewards full-album listening because it plays like a shared journey: multiple lead voices, multiple songwriting approaches, one haunted source at the center. For fans of Dylan, it’s a fascinating alternate-history chapter; for fans of contemporary roots music, it’s a deeply replayable album that feels both timeless and unmistakably alive.
Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic
Track Listing
Down On The Bottom
Married To My Hack
Kansas City
Spanish Mary
Liberty Street
Nothing To It
Golden Tom – Silver Judas
When I Get My Hands On You
Duncan And Jimmy
Florida Key
Hidee Hidee Ho #11
Lost On The River #12
Stranger
Card Shark
Quick Like A Flash
Hidee Hidee Ho #16
Diamond Ring
The Whistle Is Blowing
Six Months In Kansas City (Liberty Street)
Lost On The River #20
