BODEGA give Bob Dylan’s “Slow Train” a new musical setting while keeping its accusations aimed at people who preach one thing and live by another. The speaker watches companions abandon their principles, calls out false healers and women haters, then returns to the image of a slow train coming around the bend. The warning keeps getting closer, but its destination stays out of sight.
Dylan’s lyrics move from a woman in Alabama who warns the speaker to change his ways to a lover who leaves with someone she can destroy. Between these personal scenes, the song takes aim at negotiators who sell ambition and brotherly love without practicing either. The line about loved ones turning into puppets gives the complaint a more intimate cost. What happens to the world also happens inside the speaker’s own circle.
BODEGA recorded the cover with producer Matt Peel as a test for their sessions, then decided to keep it for All Inside Aquarium. Ben Hozie describes Dylan’s gospel-inspired text as relevant to the present moment. The refrain keeps circling back, with the train still coming and no sign that anyone has stepped off the tracks.
