Bob Dylan - Modern Times
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Free Music Notes for Modern Times
Free Music Review: Still way ahead
Hit: 5 Stars
"When I was a little kid in La Jolla, California, which is a very small town, we had a parade on the 4th of July and I remember clearly the sight of Civil War veterans marching down the main street, kicking up the dust. The first time I heard Bob Dylan, it brought back that memory. And I thought of him as something of a Civil War type. A kind of 19th century troubadour. A maverick American spirit...his words go straight to the heart of America.- Gregory Peck 1997, Kennedy Centre Award ceremony
`I couldn't exactly put in words what I was looking for, but I began searching for it over at the New York Public Library...I started reading articles in newspapers on microfilm from 1855 to about 1865...I wasn't so much interested in the issues as intrigued by the language and rhetoric of the times' - Bob Dylan,2004 Chronicles Part 1, page 84
`I realised how astonishing [Dylan's] songs were, provided that you really listened to them...this won't do for background music; it won't even do for middle ground music; it has to be right at the front of your attention'- Professor Christopher Ricks, Book Talk, Australian Radio National, March 2004.
These three comments sprung to mind, when Bob Dylan's brilliant new album concluded with a final track to match almost any in his mighty back catalogue. The music is crammed with impressions of `that old weird America'. The language is rich and almost noble in its cadences. The ancient voice is awesome. But you do have to listen very carefully. As usual, too many media critics have rushed to [generally positive] judgement. Most have been complimentary but often superficially so, like somebody reading a Camus novel for only its story line and missing deeper allegories.
Nostalgic 60s devotees may scoff, but I hear this as close to his best-ever album. Perhaps it is because I am growing old too, but this is exactly the Dylan I want to listen to right now. When he sings `Oh I miss you Nettie Moore...', I hear a chorus as affecting as anything he ever wrote and a vocal of absolute perfection. It is the highlight of the album for me.
Notwithstanding regular criticism from the concert-reviewing set, the band contributes mightily too. The album has a beautifully clean, uncomplicated sound. And the subtle use of violin, viola and, especially, cello `underneath' several tracks really adds something.
Another fabulous creation from a man who, as Tom Petty said this week, is simply better than everyone else.
Free Music Review: Listen to it twice
Hit: 5 Stars
As is not unusual with a Dylan album, I had to listen to Modern Times twice through before the greatness of it began to sink in. That might be because on the first listen, I could hardly wait for the next song (I hadn't allowed myself to hear so much as a clip before I bought the record). So songs like Thunder on the Mountain, Someday Baby, Rollin' and Tumblin', and When the Deal Goes Down, and Beyond the Horizon seemed long and not particularly inventive. My view of these songs changed as I gave myself the time to absorb them. While these songs are obviously not his best, they are still very strong material and help prop up the absolute genius of the other songs.
Workingman's Blues #2, like Mississippi, is a moving latter-years Dylan lament. It is beautiful and sincere, perfectly phrased. Dylan's voice has in my opinion never been as expressive and emotive as it is in this song.
With its descending bass line, Spirit on the Water has the kind of light touch that I would almost expect from Van Morrison. It sounds to me like the most personal song on the record.
Nettie Moore is a strange song that never lets you get too comfortable. The melody line takes a few unexpected turns and the lyrics are perfectly honed. I really think Dylan's lyrics have gotten better, not worse with age. In the mid-60's, when Dylan invented rock music as we know it now, Dylan's lyrics were brilliant and unfocused. Since Oh Mercy, Dylan has used words more sparingly, and to my mind, greater effect. Every word has a purpose and a place. Nothing's wasted here.
Ain't Talkin' is for me the greatest song on the album, and the greatest Dylan song since the 70's. It gave me goosebumps in a way I haven't had since first hearing Foot of Pride. It was the kind of epiphany I had when I first heard Like a Rolling Stone.
Musically, the arrangments are more austere than Love and Theft, but the band is fantastic.
I recognize that this album is not the equal of Blood on the Tracks, Highway 61, Blonde on Blonde, and a few others perhaps. But I judge a record against contemporary records. If those Dylan albums came out today, they'd break the 5 star ceiling. Modern Times is one of the best records of the millenium and is yet another high point in the career of an American legend. I don't think 5 stars is inappropriate; the current music culture is many times richer today than it was on August 28 because of Modern Times.
Free Music Review: Thundering Typhoons!! It's Bobbie Again!!!
Hit: 5 Stars
The sixth year of this century would go down as a year when all the old horses gave what they got .. and finshed with astonishing results. Stones rolled, Plant grew, Paul resurrected and Bobbie proved again that he ain't gonna leave the building quietly.
For us, who started listening to Dylan in mid to late eighties, that's a real treat.
I remember growing up in Calcutta, when listening to counter culture classics and watching Ray movies meant the coolest thing in the world ( a far cry from today's decadent mainstream behaviour, you see), and Dylan was crawling through a dark decade. Darkest were the years when we saw releases like Knocked Out Loaded and Down In The Groove. Both got issued on vinyl LPs which we promptly procured with our pocket money, little that we had, only to realize that these recordings did not stand a chance agains the earlier gems of the previous decades (way before the times of online reviews and thirty second intros on itunes, you had to buy to listen to judge .
We did not realize that as much we anticipate masterworks from the living legends everytime, it's just not possible to deliver a classic everytime you happen to be in the studio.
I, for one, had given up. Content with what I had from the sixties & seventies.
Keeping that in mind the new resurgence of Mr. Dylan appears both fantastic and spectacular. I have not had a chance to write reviews on the the earlier two studio albums: Time Out of Mind and Love & Theft, both classics and will stand the test of time much like Highway 61 or Blood on Tracks.
It would appear, at least to me, that Bob, in his sixties and reliving the sixties. Backed by a class act, second maybe only to 'The Band' in the seventies, he tears through a collection that matches with the best in class.
If the younger buckaroos are producing music half as good as this, forty years on, I will consider myself to be damn lucky.
As for the album, many many words have been spent in reviewing Modern Times (the best that I have read was on Uncut, a British magazine). I don't have any intention to rehash the same .. it's a great album, Dylsn's third classic in a row and consider yourself fortunate that you are sharing your mortal time with Dylan, and that he has not stopped amusing you.
Keep on rolling, Abraham!! Modern Times, whatever may that be, both for you and me .. this is our time!!
Free Music Review: Dylan on top form at 65: trad yet modern, a great album with humor and virtuosity
Hit: 5 Stars
It's so good to see Bob Dylan continue to create virtual masterpieces after a career spanning almost 50 years, when most former contemporaries have disappeared into obscurity. From his early distinctive Woody Guthrie influenced folk-style, through the years of protest songs as an iconic figure of the 1960s, the truly great albums in the 1970s like "Planet Waves", "Blood on the Tracks" and "Desire", his long collaboration with The Band; through the "gospel years" and a less creative fallow period to his latter-day renaissance when as a mature musician he once more has produced great and memorable music not because he needs to or has anything more to prove but because he loves it, he has great talent, and he can.
Traditional American folk music runs through Dylan's soul like a seam of diamond through ancient granite. If there has ever been a master of the genre who thoroughly understands the core of traditional folk-country in all its forms and permutations, and can stretch the dynamic to occupy new territory, it's Dylan.
"Modern Times" is a satisfying mix spiced with boogie, R&B and lyrical ballads. Dylan's choice of instrumentation (like acoustic double-bass for example, rather than the more obvious electric bass) gives a pre-rock age feel to a collection of faster, positively danceable numbers and slower, more poignant melodies with haunting, memorable lyrics shot through with wry humor. Dylan's uniquely distinctive vocal style has matured into a rich, gravely baritone perfectly suited to his material. No other musician in the early 21st century personifies traditional American folk styles yet makes the music so contemporary, so relevant to the modern age, and for this reason the album's title is perfect and (probably deliberately) ironic.
Dylan is like a phoenix, ever rising from the ashes into new life. That a 65-year old can find new generations of listeners and still produce fresh, distinctive and quality music like this is an almost unique achievement in the modern era. The recent Grammies and chart-topping sales of Dylan's last three albums are well deserved. In the sea of imitative conformity and contrived mediocrity which largely characterizes the contemporary music scene he continues, after 50 years, to teach younger generations of musicians how it's done.
It's great driving music, too.
Long may he thrive and survive. Respect.
Free Music Review: Modern-Times Bob Dylan
Hit: 5 Stars
I remember a time in America when We Shall Overcome and Blowin' in the Wind were national anthems for a civil rights movement that rattled our country to the rafters and unfortunately never actually commenced until that point in time. A young singer songwriter was a focal point of that movement and coincidentally is the same Bob Dylan who gives us Modern Times and systematically beats out on the Billboard Charts all the American Idols and classic rock wannabees and all this at the age of maybe 65. Bob is incredibly transitional- a metamorphosis of a singer songwriter as he exhibited in Nashville Skyline when he suddenly went country and Hurricane when he unexpectedly became urban and street wise and chronicled the events of a Jersey frame of a middleweight contender. When I first became attached to Bob Dylan in maybe'62, a young troubled comedian named Lenny Bruce dominated the pages of an ad hoc paper called the Realist and at the same time appearing at a Times Square dump known as the Dixie Hotel. Lenny was no Seinfield but instead a profane genius. Modern Times to me features some Waylon and Willie in it, some Hank Williams and possibly some Lynyrd Skynyrd influences all combined. The selections that seem to validate my thoughts are Thunder On the Mountain, The Levee's Gonna Break, and Spirit on the Water. It's not that Bob Dylan makes everybody in the music business look bad because of course there is plenty of quality out there. It's kind of like Bob is isolated in his quintessential excellence and nobody but nobody can come close to him poetically or lyrically. In my own frenetic and disjointed youth as a young journalism student at NYU with a raging society and a questioned war effort behind it, I remember Bob tramping around the Village in the early sixties talking Wood Gutherie and with Joan Baez on his arm. Whether it's Hurricane, It's All Over Now Baby Blue, The Master's of War or the prophetic and sadly current Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall, you have to look at Modern Times as another masterpiece and reflective of Bob Dylan's insurmountable cachet. Hit the purchase button now because it is absolutely essential that this CD be added to any existing ownership of Bob Dylan's Cd's, if nothing else, to make your collection up to date and verifiable as all inclusive Dylan.
Jay Adler
CD Reviewer