Album Review

Bob Dylan has been on his late-period roll for so long now that it’s easy to forget that there was a time in the early 90’s when even his staunchest defenders assumed that his days of releasing music worthwhile of his esteemed catalog seemed unlikely. They even had a tribute concert for the guy in ’93, with most of the performers there giving him compliments that sounded more like retirement toasts.

Well, here he is in 2009, more relevant right now than any of the artists who saluted him that night, on a hot streak that shows no signs of slowing down. Those looking for a few chinks in the armor will come up empty when they search his newest release, Together Through Life. The album might be his most relaxed affair since Nashville Skyline some 40 years ago, but it still has the ability to provoke profound emotions with just the turn of a phrase or the subtle hurt peering through the world-weary wisdom.

Gone, for the most part, is the fever-dream wordplay that the master has been slowly phasing out since he began this run of classics with 1997’s Time Out Of Mind. The complexity of Dylan’s lyrics, which once was his calling card, also served as a barrier between his audience and the song. You could listen along and be dazzled by the wordplay, but sometimes, to get at the emotions, you had to crack the code first.

Now Dylan stands before us unadorned, and, as a result, he sounds more human than ever. The emotions he displays here, which run for the most part to the gloomier side of the spectrum, hit you in the gut on the very first listen, aided, of course, by his endlessly expressive voice and unpredictable line readings.

The other thing notable about the album is Dylan’s return to straightforward, lost-love ballads. “Life Is Hard” and “This Dream Of You” are a reminder of the wounded brilliance he first displayed on “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” about a thousand years ago. “Life Is Hard” shows off Bob’s underrated melodic side; the tune could easily be a standard. But Dylan’s introspection is raw: “I lost the way and will/Can’t tell you where they went/I just know what they meant.” “This Dream Of You” plays the South-of-the-Border inflections that are prevalent throughout the album to the melancholic hilt: “There’s a moment when all old things become new again/But that moment might have come and gone.”

Listen to “Life is Hard”
Listen to “This Dream of You”

That song and a bunch of others on the album are dominated by the accordion of David Hidalgo from Los Lobos, which gives this album a much warmer sound than some its predecessors. The instrument embellishes the love-at-all costs desperation of album opener “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’,” plays up the sly humor of “My Wife’s Hometown”, and ambles along with the relaxed bemusement of “I Feel A Change Comin’ On”, all exceptional songs.

Listen to “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’”
Listen to “My Wife’s Hometown”
Listen to “I Feel A Change Comin’ On”

The other instrumental flourish that stands out is the lead guitar of Heartbreaker Mike Campbell, which stings on the blues numbers and weeps on the ballads. There is nothing on here that resembles rock music as we now know it; these songs have a timeless quality that sound as if they could easily find a home among the nuggets that Dylan unearths for his Theme Time radio show. (It doesn’t even make you pause when Dylan dates his character in “If You Ever Go To Houston” by mentioning his presence in the 19th-century Mexican War.)

Listen to “If You Ever Go to Houston”

Lest you think that Dylan has lost all touch with the modern world because he’s too busy crying in his Cerveza, the closing track “It’s All Good” makes it clear that the foibles of 2009 have not escaped his viewfinder. It’s one of those blues-based rompers where you get the feeling that he probably wrote about 84 verses for it and they were all as casually cutting as the ones he eventually included. He barks out the refrain with a heaving helping of disdain each time, suggesting that only a fool would actually believe that tired catch phrase.

Listen to “It’s All Good”

We’ve now reached the point where we can take Dylan for granted again if we want to, considering the consistency of his direct hits these days. I would suggest that we relish every moment though, because what Bob Dylan is accomplishing these days is unprecedented to the point of being supernatural.

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