Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 08/29/2006
When
Bob Dylan dropped
Time Out of Mind in 1997, it was a rollicking
rockabilly and
blues record, full of sad songs about mortality, disappointment, and dissolution. 2001 brought
Love and Theft, which was also steeped in stomping
blues and other
folk forms. It was funny, celebratory in places and biting in others.
Dylan has been busy since then: he did a Victoria's Secret commercial, toured almost nonstop, was in a couple films --
Larry Charles'
Masked and Anonymous and
Martin Scorsese's documentary
No Direction Home -- and published the first of a purported three volumes of his cagey, rambling autobiography,
Chronicles. Lately, he's been thinking about
Alicia Keys. This last comment comes from the man himself in
"Thunder on the Mountain," the opening track on
Modern Times, a barn-burning, raucous, and unruly
blues tune that finds the old man sounding mighty feisty and gleefully agitated: "I was thinkin' 'bout
Alicia Keys/Couldn't keep from cryin'/She was born in Hell's Kitchen and I was livin' down the line/I've been lookin' for her even clear through Tennessee." The drums shuffle with brushes, the piano is pumping like
Jerry Lee Lewis, the bass is popping, and a slide guitar that feels like it's calling the late
Michael Bloomfield back from 1966 -- à la
Highway 61 Revisited -- slips in and out of the ether like a ghost wanting to emerge in the flesh.
Dylan's own choppy leads snarl in the break and he's letting his
blues fall down like rain: "Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches/I'll recruit my army from the orphanages/ I've been to St. Herman's church and said my religious vows/I sucked the milk out of a thousand cows/I got the pork chop, she got the pie/She ain't no angel and neither am I...I did all I could/I did it right there and then/I've already confessed I don't need to confess again."
Thus begins the third part of
Dylan's renaissance trilogy (thus far, y'all).
Modern Times is raw; it feels live, immediate, and in places even shambolic. Rhythms slip, time stretches and turns back on itself, and lyrics are rushed to fit into verses that just won't stop coming.
Dylan produced the set himself under his Jack Frost moniker. Its songs are humorous and cryptic, tender and snarling. What's he saying? We don't need to concern ourselves with that any more than we had to
Willie Dixon talking about backdoor men or
Elmore James dusting his broom.
Dylan's
blues are primitive and impure. Though performed by a crackerjack band, they're played with fury; the singer wrestles down musical history as he spits in the eye of the modern world. But
blues isn't the only music here. There are parlor songs such as
"Spirit on the Water," where love is as heavenly and earthly a thing as exists in this life. The band swings gently and carefree, with
Denny Freeman and
Stu Kimball playing slippery -- and sometimes sloppy --
jazz chords as
Tony Garnier's bass and
George Receli's sputtering snare walk the beat. Another,
"When the Deal Goes Down," tempts the listener into thinking that
Dylan is aping
Bing Crosby in his gravelly, snake-rattle voice. True, he's an unabashed fan of the old arch mean-hearted crooner. But it just ain't
Bing, because it's got that true old-time swing.
Dylan's singing style in these songs comes from the great
blues and jazzman
Lonnie Johnson (whose version of the
Grosz and
Coslow standard "Tomorrow Night" he's been playing for years in his live set). If you need further proof, look to
Johnson's last recordings done in the late '50s and early '60s (
"I Found a Dream" and
"I'll Get Along Somehow"), or go all the way back to the early years for
"Secret Emotions," and
"In Love Again," cut in 1940. It is in these songs where you will find the heart of
Dylan's sweet song ambition and also that unique phrasing that makes him one of the greatest
blues singers and interpreters ever.
Dylan evokes
Muddy Waters in
"Rollin' and Tumblin." He swipes the riff, the title, the tune itself, and uses some of the words and adds a whole bunch of his own. Same with his use of
Sleepy John Estes in
"Someday Baby".. Those who think
Dylan merely plagiarizes miss the point.
Dylan is a
folk musician; he uses American
folk forms such as
blues,
rock,
gospel, and
R&B as well as lyrics, licks, and/or whatever else he can to get a song across. This tradition of borrowing and retelling goes back to the beginning of song and story. Even the title of
Modern Times is a wink-eye reference to a film by
Charlie Chaplin. It doesn't make
Dylan less; it makes him more, because he contains all of these songs within himself. By his use of them, he adds to their secret histories and labyrinthine legends. Besides, he's been around long enough to do anything he damn well pleases and has been doing so since the beginning.
Modern Times expresses emotions and comments upon everything from love (
"When the Deal Goes Down," "Beyond the Horizon") to mortality (
"The Levee's Gonna Break," "Ain't Talkin") to the state of the world -- check
"Workingman's Blues #2," where
Dylan sings gently about the "buyin' power of the proletariat's gone down/Money's getting shallow and weak...they say low wages are reality if we want to compete abroad." But in the next breath he's put his "cruel weapons on the shelf" and invites his beloved to sit on his knee. It's a poignant midtempo
ballad that walks the line between the topical songs of
Cisco Houston and
Woody Guthrie to the love songs of
Stephen Foster and
Leadbelly. One can feel both darkness and light struggling inside the singer for dominance. But in his carnal and spiritual imagery and rakish honesty, he doesn't give in to either side and walks the hardest path -- the "long road down" to his own destiny. This is a storyteller, a pilgrim who's seen it all; he's found it all wanting; he's found some infinitesimal take on the truth that he's holding on to with a vengeance. In the midst of changes that are foreboding,
Modern Times is the sound of an ambivalent Psalter coming in from the storm, dirty, bloodied, but laughing at himself -- because he knows nobody will believe him anyway.
Dylan digs deep into the pocket of American song past in
"Nettie Moore," a 19th century tune from which he borrowed the title, the partial melody, and first line of its chorus. He also uses words by
W.C. Handy and
Robert Johnson as he extends the meaning of the tome by adding his own metaphorical images and wry observations. However, even as the song is from antiquity, it's full of the rest of
Modern Times bemusement.
"The Levee's Gonna Break" shakes and shimmies as it warns about the coming catastrophe. Coming as it does on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, it's a particularly poignant number that reveals apocalypse and redemption and rails on the greedy and powerful as it parties in the gutter. There are no sacred cows -- when
Dylan evokes
Carl Perkins' exhortation to put "your cat clothes on," it's hard not to stomp around maniacally even as you feel his righteousness come through. The great irony is in the final track,
"Ain't Talkin'," where a lonesome fiddle, piano, and hand percussion spill out a gypsy
ballad that states a yearning, that amounts to an unsatisfied spiritual hunger. The pilgrim wanders, walks, and aspires to do good unto others, though he falters often -- he sometimes even wants to commit homicide. It's all part of the "trawl" of living in the world today.
Dylan's simmering growl adds a sense of apprehension, of whistling through the graveyard, with determination to get to he knows not where -- supposedly it's the other side of the world. The guitar interplay with the fiddle comes through loud and clear in the bittersweet tune.
;)
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