Your local Bob Dylan obsessive has surely mentioned Shadow Kingdom, the 2021 concert film that saw him rework an assortment of earlier songs––some established (“Forever Young,” “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”), some deeper in the back catalogue (“The Wicked Messenger,” “What Was It You Wanted”). One case (“To Be Alone with You”) marked an almost-total rewrite, and courtesy the end credits (which we now know is called “Sierra’s Theme”) an entirely new track. A smorgasbord for Dylanologists, enough to write home for, but greater still that the film component (directed by Alma Har’el and shot by Lol Crawley) is a smoky, dark––yes, shadowy––achievement all its own.
It also sat on some weird service for the short duration paying customers could even access it, seemingly left to be a fun memory from a strange summer. Event of events, then, that Shadow Kingdom will (per Pitchfork) be available to rent or buy on June 6, while an album gets proper release––vinyl, CD, and digital that are probably better than the rip we all have on our iTunes––June 2. A trailer showing off Har’el and Crawley’s work has thus been released, about which you can find more in my interview with the latter, where he deemed it “a process of ‘finding’ the end result.”
Watch the preview and hear the first official release, “Watching the River Flow,” below: