My feelings pretty much mirror Hdm's in regard to sonics. While it isn't a bad sounding LP per se, there is little doubt it spent significant time on a hard drive somewhere. While you can hear some pre-echo at the beginning of a few tunes, indicating the album was tracked to analog, Dylan's voice itself is more edgy than it ought to be, and seems cut from a different cloth than the instrumentation itself. I find the album to be musically very rewarding, and while I wouldn't place it in the category of "instant classic", it will, I believe, be upheld as one of the better Bob Dylan albums from the opus. I also agree about Columbia's QC - my LP too was smudged and had several grimey fingerprints along the lead-in grooves, and around the first tracks, as if the quality inspector had just finished a grilled cheese sandwich before setting about his task. However, the surface is quiet, the pressing is flat, and overall I'm rather pleased.
-R.
