Bob Dylan - Modern Times
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Free Music Notes for Modern Times
Free Music Review: worth every twinkle of 5 STARS
Hit: 5 Stars
As a huge and long time Dylan fan, i love all of his work and this album is right up there with his best. certainly equal to both Love & Theft and Time Out of Mind. From the moment i put in on for me it was instantly likeable. Every song! my wife who is not the Dyaln fan like me recognised this fact too. she instantly liked it from the get-go. its beyond me how anyone could say that this album is poor,or bad or even dreadful. its totally worth 5 stars.
as i grow older i realise how differewnt we all are as humans. i came to this review section of Dylans new work to expect everyone to think like me that this new album was brilliant and everyone to be rejoicing its existence. alas not so. but overall 80% of the vote here is for another brilliant piece from Bob, and I agree entirely with the overall sentinment that this is a brilliant album.!
Bob has hit his purple patch of late in the last 6 yrs or so. and we're all the luckier for this, and this album is no exception. it has been in my car Cd player now for 2 weeks, everytime i get in the car it comes on again. one generally gets sick of an album under these conditions....not this album ! I am still totally enjoying every bit of it 2 constant weeks in & out of the car all day long.
what does that tell you about it ?? its great. for all Dylan fans, its a must have !
For those complaining about his vioce after all these years etc..... bob's voice has never been his jewel, but its all about the synergy of the Bob package, his unique voice is part of his attraction,...along with his song writing, his lyrics, his storytelling, his unique lyrical phrashing in songs, his guitar and harp playing and the enigma of Bob himself. for fans this all adds up to what we love about him. His voice is raspy but soulful, not pretty but uniquely Dylan. i love his voice always have.
And this album for mine, sees his voice reaching levels it hasnt before. his falsetto attempts are smooth and attractive touches. at 65 Bob is still doing a sterling job with what he has, if anything his vocal ability is improving.
Modern Times - very bluesy, instantly likeable, soulful, emotive, skillful and just damn good listening. i like all the tracks. what else can i say. 5 stars - No Doubt !!!!!
Free Music Review: Retro-Modern
Hit: 5 Stars
Transport yourself into Bob's bizarro-world and you will find that Modern Times means nothing is modern and everything is retro. In this new disc, Bob has morphed into a cowboy-western band leader who is intent on crossing many music genres and paying homage to many other artist styles. It works beyond expectation. This album is poetry in motion. It is unusually subtle and subdued for such a powerful piece of art. It is quite simply Bob's best album in thirty years.
Modern Times features ten long tracks and covers a lot of ground. It begins with what is destined to be the most popular song on the album, Thunder on the Mountain, which is a classic Bob Dylan tune that includes interludes of guitar riffs paying tribute to Chuck Berry and all the great guitarists of the Fifties. The disc also includes two good tunes, Spirit on the Water and Nettie Moore, with vocal sounds remarkably similar to Leon Redbone. In the latter song, Bob even admits to being in a "cowboy band." The ultimate cowboy-country tribute goes down in the song When The Deal Goes Down which I like to call "the best song Willie Nelson never wrote."
The musicians used on this new album do an incredible job mixing and matching with Bob. He has praised them in an interview as his best band ever. Although we have come to expect faint praise in media interviews, we never expect that from Bob and he has evidence on this disc to support his assertion. All my bias toward The Band aside, this new band does a better job of synchronizing with Bob for his purposes. The result is marvelous. Check out the very subtle riffs on Someday Baby and you will hear a great band playing as if Bob had asked them to play the "Allman Brothers-on-Valium."
Two other classics grace this disc. One is Workingman's Blues #2. This pays homage to Merle Haggard and is one of the most beautiful songs ever written by Bob. The other is Ain't Talkin' where Bob pays homage to himself by crafting another subtle classic tune. This great song caps off the disc and leaves us all wondering how it is possible for this man to write and perform great songs for thirty-five years. The very good most recent albums of Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft were not aberrations, merely preludes to this incredible Modern Times.
Free Music Review: Modern Times is a modern classic
Hit: 5 Stars
Don't worry: no matter what the title may imply, Modern Times is not Dylan attempting to update his music to fit current trends. He has yet to do that. Instead, Modern Times is for the most part a bluesy album: he even rewrites a few blues classics ("Rollin' and Tumblin" becomes, well... "Rollin' and Tumblin'"; "Someday Baby" is a slightly different "Trouble No More" with the "Hip Shake"/"La Grange" riff, and "Levee's Gonna Break" is little more than a rewrite of "When the Levee Breaks"). "Rollin'" is energetic, but it's also probably the weakest moment on a generally strong record - original blues songs like the wrenching "Workingman's Blues #2" and hard-rockin' "Thunder on the Mountain" (love the guitar solo!) are the two indisputable highlights, and they're perfectly contrasted by jazzy country-blueses such as "Spirit on the Water", "Beyond the Horizon" and "When the Deal Goes Down". The country songs here are all among the greatest Dylan ever did in the genre, though to be fair none of them are "Lay, Lady, Lay" - "Horizon" is a bit too long, but only by about a minute or so. And while Dylan's melodies are normally nothing worth getting excited about, I love the melody (and the lyrics, and everything else) found on "Nettie Moore". In fact, I think "Nettie Moore" is my favorite song on this album - it hasn't gotten the hype of songs like "Thunder on the Water", "Workingman's Blues #2" or "Spirit on the Water", but it's a fabulous folk song and I will definitely stick up for it. Give it ten years; this'll be one of Dylan's classic songs. You see if it isn't. Oh yeah, and "Ain't Talkin'" has the best lyrics found on this album. And I really like the song's dark, doomy atmosphere too, with the violins and such. Plenty of albums by awful artists came out in 2006, and it's nice to hear Dylan (who's twice the age of most members of My Chemical Romance - third behind the Eagles and Green Day as the band I unnecessarily insult the most in my reviews, by the way) showing them all up. This is his best in a very long time.Free Music Review: A wonder....
Hit: 5 Stars
There are so many reviews praising this work; not just as part of the "comeback" triology that started with Time Out Of Mind, but for its own sake, standing against anything Dylan has produced.
I will keep this short and to the point: This work is as good, if not better, than anything Dylan has ever produced! Put on a good pair of headphones and listen to "Working Man Blues #2" and see if you agree with me that this is the most beautiful singing---the most convincing singing that you have ever heard...not just from Dylan, but from anyone. Go out and purchase the poetry of Henry Timrod (it is selling well since this album was released) from the 1860's. Read the beauty that Dylan reads. Pick up the entire collection of Bing Crosby's releases (it comes in a wonderful box set) and compare....hear what Dylan lifted from him.
In this album, his voice is majestic, victorious, beat down, risen again, and so very convincing. I could write about it forever.....it is his crowning masterpiece. It is humorous, dark, light, fun, frightening, but so committed to the reality that is life. For more of my thoughts on this album, as well as a review of a wonderful concert he gave in November, you can check out my comments on my blog: http://seamusoriley.blogspot.com/
I even caught a picture of him! It was funny at the show...the police were supposed to be there to confiscate cameras and recorders.....they were taking cell phone pictures and sending them to their wives and kids! It was a wonderful show where he played a number of these new songs. It was amazing to watch how many young people could sing along to his old songs as well as these. Even my 6 year old loves "Working Man Blues #2". She, as well as her 21 year old brother both share a love of Dylan. Not since "Blood on the Tapes: New York Sessions" and "The Genuine Basement Tapes" (1967) has so much emotion been put to audio, though "Pressin' On" came close.
Treasure this masterpiece! It is timeless.
Free Music Review: This is real music!!!
Hit: 5 Stars
"Modern times" is Bob Dylan's 44th album, his first US #1 in some 30 years, and winner of 2 Grammys. It had all the major (and minor) critics practically falling over themselves to come up with the most gushing reviews on release.
It's also the first Bob Dylan album I've owned. All the above listed achievements piqued my interest and so I took the plunge and got it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not new to his music (I love "Like a rolling stone", "Forever young" and "Blowin' in the wind" to mention a few).
At just 10 tracks (though clocking past an hour) flowing through folk/country/blues/rock, with superior musicianship and storytelling lyrics (though sometimes cryptic and laden with old testament Biblical imagery -"if I catch my enemies sleeping/I'll just slaughter `em where they lie" from "Ain't talkin'", "Spirit on the water/darkness on the face of the deep" from "Spirit on the water"), superb stuff!
Opening is "Thunder on the mountain" which does just that. A great rock and roll number with lyrics that manage to fit Alicia Keys in the picture. Other uptempo tracks are the rocking blues of "Rollin' and tumblin'", the blues of "Someday baby" (winner of best solo rock vocal performance Grammy), and "The levees gonna break" (great bassline).
My favourites though are the slower stuff; the tender "Spirit on the water", the retro and reflective "When the deal goes down", "Working man's blues #2" (simply stunning and one of my favourites), the more country styled "Beyond the horizon", "Nettie Moore", and the 8 plus minute closing cut "Ain't talkin'", my other favourite.
His heartfelt raspy, nasal vocal style is one you either love or loathe, but it fits each song like a glove.
Listening to Dylan, I can see where loads of other acts derive their muse: Eric Clapton, Chris Rea, Dire Straits, even Springsteen to mention a few. Well, he's got a new fan in me.