Bob Dylan - Modern Times
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Free Music Notes for Modern Times
Free Music Review: Dylan caught in the gears...
Hit: 5 Stars
Dylan's latest masterpiece explodes into existence and then maintains an even keel throughout. Unlike the electronically moody and dark "Time Out of Mind" and the eclectic "Love and Theft", "Modern Times" has an almost beatnik coolness to it. The songs float by one after the other, just happy to be there, impervious to jibes. They brush off any excuses or platitudinous write-offs. Even the tracks that sound lame at first grow roots and expose their undeniably solid foundations. The whole work slowly taps into the conscious until it finally shatters all doubts. A single listen won't do it. Once past that point of no return, it reveals all it has to offer, which translates into endless hypnotic replays. Somehow, though these ten songs fit very well into Dylan's epic repertoire, the collection emanates a surprising freshness. "Modern Times" sounds familiar and unprecedented all at once.
Dylan also reigns in his shattered voice on this release. Gone are the raspy phlegmmy notes that occassionally pockmarked its immediate predecessors. With cigarette stained larynx and well trodden neverending band in full control, Dylan sails to new heights not heard for years. Everything sounds perfectly situated, sure of itself, tight, and defiant. And though Dylan's vocal range is understandably squelched by age, no self-consciousness mars the polished growls and grunts.
Lyrically, "Modern Times" delivers as many stratified depths as his surreal musings of the sixties. "Thunder on the Mountain", the ominous opening song, defies analysis while conjuring up memories of thin men, a row of desolation, and approximate queens: "I got the porkchops she got the pie," "The pistols are poppin' and the power is down," "I've sucked the milk out of a thousand cows." Morphing guitar solos, which seem to span the history of rock, add to the fantastic miasma. "Thunder" evokes both God and sickness with a chugging beat. Moving three steps from the apocalypse, Dylan remains stung by the mysterious amorous passion that emerged on "Blood on the Tracks." The meditative "When the Deal Goes Down" pledges love until death do us part. Pain of the heart also pervades "Spirit on the Water," "Someday Baby," "Beyond the Horizon," and "Nettie Moore." Regret and disgust weave subthemes throughout the entire work. Until yet another stunning closer, "Ain't Talkin'," wails a parting shot at our slippery human-all-too-humanness: "In the human heart an evil spirit can dwell, I am a-tryin' to love my neighbor and do good unto others, But oh, mother, things ain't going well." One too many mornings for Bob.
The frustrated confused rage of "Wokingman's Blues #2" receives apt punctuation via a tinkling piano line. Dylan masterfully adumbrates the emotional nexus resulting from the neglect of poverty: "I'll drag 'em all down to hell and I'll stand 'em at the wall, I'll sell 'em to their enemies", but later, "Tell me now, am I wrong in thinking, That you have forgotten me?" Easily a classic.
"The Levee's Gonna Break" presages hard rain doom. "Some people on the road carryin' everything they own, Some people got barely enough skin to cover their bones", "Plenty of cheap stuff out there and still around that you take," "I ain't got enough room to even raise my head," "Don't be a stranger with no brain or heart." How high's the water, mama?
"Modern Times" shares its title with a movie featuring an almost mute tramp victimized by change, work, and progress. Somehow the ragamuffin finds and nurtures love, though not without great effort. He gets eaten by machinery. Both works, album and film, grope for light in the contemporary haze. Each succeeds in exemplifying the conflicts of the individual within the increasingly dense fog of modernity. Both will also continue to entertain, enlighten, and ground us lonely modern humans for some time to come.
Free Music Review: Modern Times: Dylan's New Phase
Hit: 5 Stars
Modern Times is Bob Dylan's first album in nearly five years, the longest he has ever gone without releasing a record. Last fall, though, Dylan did release a new song, "Tell Ol' Bill," on the North Country soundtrack, a song that is emblematic of Dylan's new style of songwriting, which is everywhere apparent on Modern Times. "Tell Ol' Bill" evokes the cold, grey landscape of the northwest through its topographical details and employs spare observations to delineate the desperate world-weariness of the speaker. In some sense, "Tell Ol' Bill" is an exercise in redundancy, both musically and lyrically, that evokes a mood rather than tells a story. Even though most of Dylan's songs post-1964 are evocative rather than narrative, his earlier style was more playful and allusive, whereas the later style, as seen in "Tell Ol' Bill," is sparer and more observational. On Modern Times, the song that comes closest to "Tell Ol' Bill," which regrettably does not appear on the album, is "Ain't Talkin'." Like "Tell Ol' Bill," "Ain't Talkin'" uses simple, unadorned language to evoke the speaker's cynical world-view and his desperate mental state.
Much will be made of the relationship of Modern Times to its predecessors, and yes, the album does feel like a natural progression from Dylan's previous two releases, Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft. Of course, musically, Modern Times is closer to Love and Theft, for both serve as something of an odyssey through American music that embraces several different musical styles. Yet, whereas the songs on Love and Theft are humorous and playful, those on Modern Times are dark and often elegiac, and its melancholy and introspective mood more closely resembles Time Out of Mind.
However, Modern Times is not unrelentingly dark, but is filled with lighter moments, from the bouncy rock of "Thunder on the Mountain" to the blues romp of "Rollin' and Tumblin'." As on Love and Theft, Dylan creates an amalgamation of American music on Modern Times from the jazz croonings of "Spirit on the Water" to the swinging blues of "Someday Baby." Indeed, the influence of the blues is pervasive on Modern Times: "Rollin' and Tumblin'" is a reworking of the Muddy Waters song; "Someday Baby" evokes Slim Harpo and Elmore James; "Workingman's Blues No. 2" was inspired by the Merle Haggard song; "The Levee's Gonna Break" borrows from the Memphis Minnie tune; and "Nettie Moore" is Dylan's revamping of an old folk ballad.
Of course, Dylan isn't doing anything different on Modern Times than he has been doing throughout his career, e.g. on Love and Theft. After all, Dylan is a folk musician, in the sense that he is tapping into the history of American music and adapting it to our own modern times, which do not differ as much as we'd like to think from olden days. Indeed, according to Dylan in his liner notes to World Gone Wrong, we are living in the "New Dark Ages." Thus, Dylan's borrowing of blues tropes is appropriate to his musical ideology, and he appropriates these sources with authority. Dylan even sounds like an old bluesman on many of these songs, which seems to be what he always wanted to sound like. Dylan also plays the roles of folk balladeer and jazz crooner with vocal conviction, and his vocals are strong throughout the album, clearly enunciated, precisely phrased, and always carrying the appropriate emotional weight. In a sense, then, Modern Times represents the culmination of Dylan's career, in that he has made a record that fits seamlessly into the fabric of American music, creating a sound and vision that rivals that of his musical heroes in its depth and urgency.
Free Music Review: Exceptional in everyway
Hit: 5 Stars
Often, for me at least, I sometimes feel that lauded veteran artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, or even more seasonsed veterans such as Bob Dylan are bloated with ratings that are slightly larger than the material that they actualy boast. That sometimes may be true, but MODERN TIMES is the finest Dylan album in sometimes on no matter what scale that you are rating with or whatever. Classic and a surefire Grammy nominee; I wouldn't be surprised to see Dylan nominated for album of the year.
The album opens bombastically with "Thunder On The Mountain", which starts with a stirring introduction that sounds ironically or coincidentally like thunder bursting. Dylan shows his hipness in this old style track by name-dropping R&B standout Alicia Keys referencing her rough childhood in hell's kitchen. More amazing my be Bob's rhymes of "sons of bitches" and "orphanages", the true songwriter's craft (hehe). The track is lengthy, but the sick guitar solos and the old-time, straighforward rock and roll feel make up. Sure Dylan isn't per say a premier vocalist (with his signature nasal tone), but his vocal style works and gives that organic, natural, earthy vocal feel to his songs.
On an album where ballads are among Dylan's strong points, Dylan's distinctive nasal-vocals shine brightly on the immaculate "Spirit On The Water" which features a very lush electric guitar sound. The chord progression here just works flawlessly and one can't help but indulge throughout the 7:42 track. The ending is so appropriate and closes a second straight consistent track. After the lengthy ballad, Dylan accelerates the tempo with the folksy, 1960s inspired "Rollin' and Tumblin'". The timbre of this track is so desireable with the vintage sounding drums (they have a shallow tone) and the driven tone of the electric guitar. If there is any need to even mention, Dylan's lyrics are first rate, as much so as his earliest works.
Dylan once again slows the mood down with perhaps the most beautiful, endearing singer-songwriter track that I have heard in a long time. "When The Deal Goes Down" just might be that "song of the year" for me because it is absolutely gorgeous. You say a Bob Dylan song gorgeous? Maybe Bob isn't that spectacular vocalist, but the touching hearfelt lyrics, the timbre with exceptional piano lines and electric guitar lines just make this track "heavenly". It is definitely one of the most solemn tracks I have heard for sometimes and one of my favorites of the entire year in ANY genre.
Dylan presses on with the bluesy uptempo "Someday Baby" followed by the equally strong "Workingman's Blues #2". Track #7 "Beyond The Horizon" employs a very nice jazzy-folk feel. Again this is another ideal track with an exceptional chord progression, and a reference back to the 1960s and 1970s. Again, the lyrics are the most integral part of the "sale" here as Dylan is the masterful songwriter. His "mad" skills are again showcased on the folksy "Nettie Moore" where again Dylan's characteristically nasal vocals are ideal. The string work within this track is also exceptional .
"The Levee's Gonna Break" sports a nice bluesy arrangement, again characteristic of Dylan. Finally "Ain't Talkin'" is a lengthy, but appropriate ending.
Overall, Bob Dylan's MODERN TIMES should go down as a classic. It is no surprise that veteran Dylan scored an easy #1 with MODERN TIMES just more solidifying his relevance in today's "modern times". Nearly the perfect album!!!
Free Music Review: Dylan As We Find Him
Hit: 5 Stars
In concerts these days (and, at age 65, he plays 130 of them each year), with his William Powell moustache and Stetson hat, he hunches over an electric piano like a hobo by a trashcan fire. His band, LOUD and tight, blazes through a hodgepodge of mostly lesser-nebula songs. The singer never looks at or speaks to the audience. His voice is a ferocious rasp--a chain saw going on and off. Not a word is intelligible and the songs are arranged and performed so differently from their "original" versions that even the singer's oldest fans are left guessing at the set list. It is more Kabuki than concert, more Beckett than Broadway.
31 studio albums into his career, Bob Dylan is still in active collaboration with his inimitable muse. His latest album--his first in five years--is Modern Times. Moving through much of the same territory as his last two albums, this record continues to advance the Dylan dialectic: he suggests who he might be by oblique reference to what he might not be.
Within, between and behind the enigmatic gamesmanship, everything a Dylan fan might want is here. In fact, it's all here in the very first song. The driving boogie "Thunder on the Mountain" is a murky flood of, by turns, romantic yearning, comic bluster, and vaguely sinister sentiments ("I was thinkin' 'bout Alicia Keys, couldn't keep from crying," "I've been studying the art of love . . . I want some real good woman [apparently Ms. Keys] to do just what I say," "I've sucked the milk out of a thousand cows," "I got the pork chops, she got the pie," "I'll say this, I don't give a damn about your dreams," "the hammer's on the table, the pitchfork's on the shelf") Never far from view, either, is Dylan's religion ("Some sweet day I'll stand beside my King."). Like so many great Dylan songs, it is revelatory and exhilarating precisely because one can't quite pin down just what it reveals.
Of all of Dylan's albums, this new record arguably shares most with the sprawling bootlegged "Basement Tapes" Dylan recorded with The Band in Woodstock after his motorcycle crash in 1966. It reveals that, as much as he is a poet and a mystic, Dylan is a music fan: he is as fascinated with the music of the 1920's and 1930's as he is by Chicago blues, Songcatcher ballads, Jimmie Rogers' country yodels, 50's crooner tunes, and countless other artists and genres. And he shares much of it with us here. Not unlike Elvis Presley, Dylan wavers between an anti-establishment rock-and-roll self and a would-be crooner self.
For those who prefer Dylan's political songs, there is the excellent labor balled "Workingman's Blues #2." "Rollin' and Tumblin'" is a conscious nod to Robert Johnson. "Spirit on the Water" and "Beyond the Horizon" sound like swing ballads pulled from the first half of the last century--like songs you'd hear behind Jack Nicholson in the bar scene from The Shining. "When The Deal Goes Down" is a slow country waltz that would have fit well in a Grateful Dead set, "Nettie Moore" a languid, lovely ballad as beautiful as anything Dylan has ever written. "Ain't Talkin'" is a dirge as evocative of Dylan acolyte Townes Van Zandt's "Waitin' Around To Die" as of Dylan's own "One More Cup of Coffee."
Modern Times is Dylan at his best--which means it is Dylan as we find him. Five years from now, if we're lucky enough to get another album from him, he will still be showing us another side.
Free Music Review: Dylan Returns With A Stunning Masterpiece
Hit: 5 Stars
There are a lot of things to occupy America's thoughts these days: War, terrorism, the economy, the Hurricane Katrina crisis, gas prices, and (depending on who you ask) an incompetent president and his administration. Bob Dylan, however, isn't thinking about any of that on his new album, MODERN TIMES. He's thinking about Alicia Keys. If anything else is on his mind, he doesn't blatantly say so. Like most of Dylan's output, a lot of this latest offering is open to interpretation. Is "The Levee's Gonna Break" actually about Hurricane Katrina? That's for you to decide.
What IS obvious is that MODERN TIMES is another masterpiece in the canon of the 65-year-old singer/songwriter. Like TIME OUT OF MIND and "LOVE AND THEFT" before it, MODERN TIMES is rooted in the blues and other American song forms, the origins of which are all at least eighty years old. These forms still hold considerable power; Dylan has been completely revitalized by them. His voice hasn't been this expressive in decades and his band, which he claims is the best he's ever had (a statement that will undoubtedly spark debate), plays with a natural and relaxed intensity. That's not even mentioning the songs.
What a batch of songs they are - "Thunder On The Mountain," "Rollin' & Tumblin'," and "Someday Baby" (an expertly crafted 15-bar blues) crackle with energy and drive. "Spirit On The Water" is a gorgeous and lovelorn ballad, featuring a gently swinging groove and a lyrical harmonica solo. The country waltz "When The Deal Goes Down" is lovely. "Beyond The Horizon" is the weakest song on the album, but it is still an interesting offering in old-time swing. "Nettie Moore" is one of Dylan's more interesting songs, with each verse split up into sections of 11 and 14 beats; the chorus is simply beautiful. "The Levee's Gonna Break" could have used the bite it would have been afforded on "LOVE AND THEFT," but it is still a great song.
The two greatest songs on the album, however, are masterpieces that will undeniably stand among Dylan's best songs. "Workingman's Blues #2" is simultaneously a love song and an anthem to the working man, a political statement the likes of which Dylan hasn't attempted in years. The closest thing to a full-out rock song on the album, its beautiful melody, chord progression, and well-written lyrics assure it status as an instant classic. The album's ominous closer, "Ain't Talkin'," is the best on the album, painting a bleak portrait of a world where "every nook and cranny has its tears" and people will "jump on your misfortune when you're down." The subdued backing of the band and Dylan's rough voice suits this song better than any other. It is truly haunting, and even after the final major chord you cannot help but feel chills.
All in all, this album doesn't quite reach the majestic heights of "LOVE AND THEFT" (it's not as much fun and doesn't rock as hard), but it still stands head and shoulders above most of Dylan's other albums. Its songwriting is excellent and Dylan hasn't sounded this good in a long time. In a year of many great releases by many great artists, MODERN TIMES is among the very best.