Compulsory 97%
Well, this review was started a long time ago and interrupted en medias res, rather than rewrite the whole thing, I am just going to try to finish what I had…
My Thoughts So Sublime has been awoken from its temporary hiatus by the most monumental event possible for this website: the release of a new Bob Dylan album. As the album was just released yesterday, I can only offer my initial thoughts. In particular tonight, I will focus on placing the album into the Dylan canon. I don’t command the lyrics quite well enough to delve too deeply into them.
Modern Times– perhaps to an even greater extent than Love and Theft– seems to announce Dylan’s full embracement of himself as an anachronism. It is the first time I have hit upon this word, but it seems to be the perfect term to encompass Dylan’s late career. It is one thing for others to call him a a dinosaur– this I imagine is frequent. Upon hearing of his new album the other day, my friend Lydia responded incredulously, “Does he still sing?” as though this were somehow quite an impossible proposition. It is another thing to explore– as I think Dylan does– the experience of living as an anachronism. Okay, Merriam-Webster, let’s see what you got:
anachronism:
1 : an error in chronology; especially : a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other
Definition one describes the process of musical composition at work on Modern Times and in just about all of Dylan’s late career. Dylan’s musical style is notably “anachronistic,” following in the glorious footsteps of Love and Theft. As on the previous album, we have several songs in which Dylan stuffs and crams his modern voice into the 12 bar blues form– in “Thunder on the Mountain”, “The Levee’s Gonna Break”“Rolling and Tumbling”, “Someday Baby.” The latter two are actually old blues standards that Dylan has re-written. Dylan re-employs this strategy in his re-write of the folk standard “Nettie Moore.” I must admit that I’m not familiar with the original, but I had a hunch that it was a re-write like the two blues songs and I was correct. Check this marvelously funny and anachronistic line for a folk ballad:
Well, the world of research has gone berserk
Too much paperwork
(which joins an elite set of Dylan’s greatest rhymes, joined on this
“Workingman’s Blues” on the other hand is another lovely folk ballad, Dylan’s anachronistic donning of the Woody Guthrie persona to speak for the working class in an age of globalized economy:
There’s an evenin’ haze settlin’ over town
Starlight by the edge of the creek
The buyin’ power of the proletariat’s gone down
Money’s gettin’ shallow and weak
Well, the place I love best is a sweet memory
It’s a new path that we trod
They say low wages are a reality
If we want to compete abroad
Depsite the excellence of these two anachronistic folk ballads, the highlights of the album are the songs whose rhythm and progressions evoke a sort of 1930s jazz/ragtime feel– “Beyond the Horizon”, “When the deal goes down” and the immaculate “Spirit on the Water” (the first of which is based on a Louis Armstrong jazz progression) In other words, we have exactly the same mix as we saw on Love and Theft. All of the musical direction suggests this idea of anachronism, most blatant in Dylan’s crooning search for Alicia Keeeeeys in Tennesseeeeeee, which is enormously funny.
2 : a person or a thing that is chronologically out of place; especially : one from a former age that is incongruous in the present
3 : the state or condition of being chronologically out of place
Although I would have to write the essay to prove it, preoccupation with time is probably the major chain linking the major works of Dylan’s late career: Oh Mercy, Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, and Modern Times. Or to put it most accurately time and love. In Dylan’s own words– “Time and love has branded me with its claws.” We have four incredible albums recording the scars left by time and love. Time and Love– that might be the name of my first album… in stores any time now (check out my new website amanwithnoalibi.blogspot.com !)
Time is running backwards, and so is the bride
Is the whole thing going backward? Are they playing our song?
You think I’m over the hill
I am quite certain that Modern Times is meant to strike with tremendous irony, the words suggest ‘the current period of time’; perhaps ‘the world we live in today’, while everything about the album pushes in the opposite direction. First of all there is the lovely black and white packaging of the album, which summons up the title’s most likely referrant: the Charlie Chaplin film of the same name. Chaplin has been a major figure for Dylan throughout his career, suggesting… I don’t even know how to define it. Sufficed to say that Dylan has always seen himself as a Charlie Chaplin figure– quintessentially a ’song-and-dance man’
I remember beginning an essay I wrote on Dylan’s late career with a quote by one of the beat generation poets– I forget which one, and I am also not going to look up the quotation. The essential point was that, as a man grows older, he becomes less representative of his age and more representative of himself. This is at least as true for Bob Dylan as it is for anyone else in history. Once seen as the voice and encapsulation of an entire generation, Dylan has increasingly become Bob Dylan– one of the most fascinating and enigmatic voices in American history.
This process of embracing himself as an anachronism is what I see as the force that saved his late career which I– rare among Dylan enthusiasts– consider at least as good as his early career. Only once in his career was Dylan in step with the musical zeitgeist of his time– this was his early folk music that earned him that title of ‘voice of a generation.’ After that, he jumped off the map. Blonde on Blonde and Highway 61 are extra-terrestrial albums. Nothing like them had ever existed and nothing like them had ever existed again. From that point, Dylan loses track of– one might even claim that he loses interest in the musical trends of his day. In fact, he consciously chose to flaunt musical styles with the release of his Nashville Skyline and the Self Portrait. His 1st major renaissance came with the timeless pieces Blood on the Tracks and Desire– but after that he started to get in trouble, especially in the 80s by trying to embrace the sounds and production techniques of the day (see Knocked Out Loaded… or take my word for it). His recent string of excellent albums have all been resurections of sounds and material long presumed dead– Oh Mercy and Time Out of Mind are most alike in their thick, ancient production sound (two of the best produced albums of all time) and then there are Good as I Been To You and World Gone Wrong in which the lone Dylan performs just a bunch of old folk and blues songs that he loves– nevermind that he is one of 10 surviving people who remembers them. It is the same thing that makes his amazing radio show– Theme Time Radio Hour With Bob Dylan– so amazing, it is completely anachronistic– it is the type of program that you imagine plaid-shirted 1950s children listening to while lying on their stomachs in front of a television sized radio.
At any rate, this a poor review, I haven’t had much energy for reviews lately. Just buy the album, its outstanding. Not as good as Love and Theft, but every song is strong and at least “Nettie Moore” and “Spirit on the Water” will instantly ascend to the top of Dylan’s canon. “Blind Willie McTell” would have fit in well on this album.
You think I’m past my prime
Let me see what you got
We can have a whoppin’ good time
