Bob Dylan has earned his reputation as a great songwriter. His singing, however, proved to be something else last night in Rec Hall.

He has always had to face accusations that his voice does not sound great on the radio, but Dylan's live translations of his songs make his recording-studio material sound beautiful. During his two-hour performance he demonstrated why he is more highly praised for his poetic magic than his enunciation and pronunciation.

With his trademark just-rolled-outta-bed look, Dylan croaked and mumbled his way through a blend of his standard classics and material lifted from his most recent release Oh Mercy.

Backed by bassist Tony Garnier, drummer Christopher Parker and Saturday Night Live's guitarist G. E. Smith, Dylan appeared to still enjoy the stage after nearly 27 years of performing. Throughout the show, the 50-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer continued to break into a wry grin as he swaggered about the stage.

Often, only a silhouette of the singer could be seen because of the vicious back-lighting blaring into the eyes of the audience seated at the lower right-hand side of the stage. The lights seemed to be some kind of sadistic test of the fans' loyalty to the singer.

Their loyalty to him was more than apparent with bursts of applauding for nearly every tiny sign of animation from the singer.

Dylan's newer songs were, however, greeted with somewhat of indifference from the packed house. Songs like "Everything is Broken" and "Man in the Long Black Coat" seemed to briefly lose the audience's attention as they tried to endure until the more familiar songs came around.

Despite the lack of strong reaction from the crowd, Dylan seemed more impassioned by the Oh Mercy material. His Tex-Mexish "Political World" was run through at full throttle with his band churning fiercely behind him.

The perfunctory songs like "All Along the Watchtower" and "Like a Rolling Stone" drew the largest response from the crowd, but Dylan's treatment of the classics sounded as if he has grown tired of playing them over the years.

"All Along the Watchtower" and the encore acoustic rendering of "Knocking on Heavens Door" seemed to suffer the most from Dylan's new twisting of them. "Watchtower," especially, became almost unrecognizable with his gravelly mumbling of the old warhorse.