This is Mary Lee Kortes and a five-piece band playing Dylan's Blood on the Tracks front to back, captured live at Arlene Grocery in 2001. The cassette-booth recording gives it a raw, close feel, you hear the room, the hesitations, the way a voice cracks slightly when it pushes. Kortes sings with a plainness that suits the material. She doesn't ornament or reinterpret so much as inhabit the songs, letting the melodies do their work.
Andy York's guitar work carries much of the colour. Acoustic twelve-string on some tracks, electric slide on others, harmonica traded back and forth with Kortes. The arrangements stay lean: piano, organ, bass, drums, nothing layered for effect. It sounds like a good bar band working through repertoire they know well, which is what it was.
For people who find tribute records pointless, this will confirm that view. For those who think a song can be sung more than one way and still mean something, it offers a version that strips away studio polish and leaves the tunes standing on their own. Rolling Stone gave it four stars when Bar None reissued it the following year.
