Gibrish’s band member Christer Suneson summed it up nicely when he said “perhaps there have been too many Dylan versions recorded in the world”.
When you’re channeling one of the world’s greats so closely that you offer up a 21-song album of covers you’ve got both to get it right and to offer up something new and attention grabbing at the same time.
To be fair to the Sundsvall based band, they have a bloody good go at it.
I could have chosen many of the tracks on the album ‘Walk with Bob Dylan’ as the sample here, they are all classics, including ‘Don’t think twice it’s all right’, ‘Meet me in the morning’ and ‘All along the Watchtower’, some of them recorded, some of them live (at the Club E-Street in Sundsvall where Bruce was no doubt lurking somewhere, hoping they might cover him next) and some of them both recorded and live.
But in the end I opted for ‘The times they are a-changing’ because of all the tracks apart from ‘Masters of War’ perhaps it is the most symbolic of the state of play geopolitically in the world right now.
When Dylan wrote it in 1963, it was interpreted as an anthem about the inevitability of social, political, and cultural change, warning that those who resisted the shift—particularly politicians and the older generation— would be left behind. It acted as a siren call for the Civil Rights and folk movements, urging people to accept that the old order was dead and encouraged the counterculture movement which lasted until the dreadful events at Altamont in December 1969, which put it to bed, along with the flower power decade.
It also served as a warning to the establishment (“senators, congressmen” in the song) that a new, unavoidable social order was coming.
Fast forward to today and we live in equally uncertain times of lollopaloozie Presidents, murderous dictators, ayatollahs and the New World Order.
So there is a gravitas about this song that expects to be honoured, along with all the other Dylan masterpieces on Gibrish’s album.
And to be fair they live up to the expectation.
Dylan’s original, as good as it is, could have been recorded in someone’s living room in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco by a hippy with flowers in his hair, smoking some draw.
Gibrish’s version is rougher, more earthy, with the feel of a recording in a drinking hole in Dublin’s Temple Bar, with a raspy vocal to match, an accordion replacing the harmonium, fewer words and an added bridge which does wonders for the song by breaking up Dylan’s repeating verse-refrain stanzas.
In doing so they created a cover for our times rather than Dylan’s.
In other words, if this was a new song le tout Sweden would be rushing to buy it.
Can’t say fairer than that.
Is the rest of the album of the same quality? Find out for yourself…
(Continues after the Spotify link).
Gibrish are currently playing dates in Stockholm (6th May) and Gothenburg (7th May) and have 20 gigs booked so far for 2026.
Find them on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gibrish2
