Starting this article off is near impossible. I don’t know what to say about this man. Not enough can be said and not enough has been said. He is the one, the single most important individual in all of popular/rock & roll music. His words are fearlessly introspective and damningly aware. His compositions are bared souls, instrumentally explosive and emotionally rupturing. The man that has his own genre, a genre that knows no musical or lyrical bounds. Every album he puts out seems to null and void all the garbage that precedes and follows it in the same year.
Two days ago, Bob Dylan released his 33rd studio album entitled Together Through Life. Like "Love and Theft" and Modern Times before it, this album is a whirlwind, especially considering his co-writer on the album is Robert Hunter, lyricist of the late Jerry Garcia.
It begins with “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’”, a latin-infused blues diatribe of Dylan professing his love, beyond which lies nothing. It is somewhat reminiscent of the kickstart effect that “Thunder on the Mountain” had for Modern Times. The song introduces a vocal styling that has been developing over the last few albums: one that is worn, battered, and wise as is Dylan in his old age. The song follows a traditional 12-bar blues form that seems essential for the subject matter. The most shocking part of all, at least for me, is the accordion, played by David Hidalgo of Los Lobos – an instrument often associated with musical gimmicks. Yet, again, Dylan is able to compose true music out of lyrical and instrumental freedom.
We are brought down from that high with “Life Is Hard”, whose plucked depression joins a jazzy frontier backdrop. You can’t help but feel the lost love in Dylan’s voice as the guitars cry in high-note tremolo fashion. This is not the whining of a teenager trying to force maturity, this is the true-to-form despair of a man who is without purpose in this person’s absence. We’ve listened to Dylan write about his environment, but there’s just something special when his poetry is aimed at himself. It’s undeniably honest.
Heavily blues focused, the album continues with the slow chugging blues of “My Wife’s Home Town” in which Dylan lets us know full well the extent to which his lust for his wife drives him absolutely mad, a point driven home with the romantic input, “my love for her is all I know”. This comes amidst Dylan’s first economy-charged lines in “State gone broke/the county’s dry”, where he directs his audience not to engage in self-pity and hopelessness but to “keep on walkin’” and live with the one you love in mind, as he does. In fact, he may simply be saying that life is not life unless you’re together, through life.
With titles like “Forgetful Heart”, “Jolene”, “This Dream of You”, and “Shake Shake Mama”, the lyrical emphasis is blatant. “Jolene” and “Shake Shake Mama” particularly scream Chess Records-era blues with their Muddy Waters sound and Dylan’s Howlin’ Wolf-esque growl, a stark contrast to the intermingled country jazz and Tex-Mex folk ever-present. Almost bipolar with his songs of love lost and love gained, and depression and jubilance, it’s really a metaphor for life in a sense – the ups and downs of this 67-year-old road warrior of a troubadour.
And, yet, before we limit the genres to blues, country, and folk, we have soul in “I Feel A Change Comin’ On”. Dylan croons, “Well life is for love/And they say that love is blind/If you wanna live easy/Baby, pack your clothes with mine.” Yet again, Bob Dylan has this effortless ability to incorporate a wide range of styles and still produce a seminally unforced, organic album.
One thing we’ve come to expect from Dylan is a certain degree of existentialism in the vain of social commentary. Somewhere on this album has to be even a vague comment on the economic state of the country, and we get it with the final track, “It’s All Good”. Backed by the same blues shuffle style of “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’”, Dylan satirically grabs hold of modern-day urban slang to emphasize that, well, it’s really not all good and to say so is just one monumental dismissal of what needs to be addressed. “Politicians are tellin’ lies”, “Wives are leaving their husbands”, “Brick by brick they tear you down”, “People on the land/Some of them so sick/They can hardly stand”, “Everywhere you look there’s more misery”, and “Buildings are crumblin’” are just a few of the sentiments Dylan leaves us with as he closes out his latest record. He may not be addressing the Wall Street corporate establishment verbatim, but he is no doubt damning them for that laundry list of horrors they are wreaking on his country.
Pre-rock & roll rock & roll has been the focus of 2000-era Dylan, even so much as seeing his live show, which vaguely resembles his Highway 61 Revisited or Blonde On Blonde sound, favoring the sound that he and his backing band have come to embrace on their Never Ending Tour.
Relishing in his fully aged growl of a howl, Bob Dylan has become the wise old man that he so eagerly tried to be as a youth. Together Through Life is just that sort of record, the unforced unfettered wisdom of a man that has kept on walkin’.
Copyright © 2009 Clarity Digital Group LLC d/b/a Examiner.com.
April 30, 2009
USA: Keep on Walkin,' Bob Dylan - Together Through Life, 2009
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DENVER, Colorado / BALTIMORE Music Reviews Examiner / April 30, 2009
By Zach Zwagil, Baltimore Music Reviews Examiner
Starting this article off is near impossible. I don’t know what to say about this man. Not enough can be said and not enough has been said. He is the one, the single most important individual in all of popular/rock & roll music. His words are fearlessly introspective and damningly aware. His compositions are bared souls, instrumentally explosive and emotionally rupturing. The man that has his own genre, a genre that knows no musical or lyrical bounds. Every album he puts out seems to null and void all the garbage that precedes and follows it in the same year.
Two days ago, Bob Dylan released his 33rd studio album entitled Together Through Life. Like "Love and Theft" and Modern Times before it, this album is a whirlwind, especially considering his co-writer on the album is Robert Hunter, lyricist of the late Jerry Garcia.
It begins with “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’”, a latin-infused blues diatribe of Dylan professing his love, beyond which lies nothing. It is somewhat reminiscent of the kickstart effect that “Thunder on the Mountain” had for Modern Times. The song introduces a vocal styling that has been developing over the last few albums: one that is worn, battered, and wise as is Dylan in his old age. The song follows a traditional 12-bar blues form that seems essential for the subject matter. The most shocking part of all, at least for me, is the accordion, played by David Hidalgo of Los Lobos – an instrument often associated with musical gimmicks. Yet, again, Dylan is able to compose true music out of lyrical and instrumental freedom.
We are brought down from that high with “Life Is Hard”, whose plucked depression joins a jazzy frontier backdrop. You can’t help but feel the lost love in Dylan’s voice as the guitars cry in high-note tremolo fashion. This is not the whining of a teenager trying to force maturity, this is the true-to-form despair of a man who is without purpose in this person’s absence. We’ve listened to Dylan write about his environment, but there’s just something special when his poetry is aimed at himself. It’s undeniably honest.
Heavily blues focused, the album continues with the slow chugging blues of “My Wife’s Home Town” in which Dylan lets us know full well the extent to which his lust for his wife drives him absolutely mad, a point driven home with the romantic input, “my love for her is all I know”. This comes amidst Dylan’s first economy-charged lines in “State gone broke/the county’s dry”, where he directs his audience not to engage in self-pity and hopelessness but to “keep on walkin’” and live with the one you love in mind, as he does. In fact, he may simply be saying that life is not life unless you’re together, through life.
With titles like “Forgetful Heart”, “Jolene”, “This Dream of You”, and “Shake Shake Mama”, the lyrical emphasis is blatant. “Jolene” and “Shake Shake Mama” particularly scream Chess Records-era blues with their Muddy Waters sound and Dylan’s Howlin’ Wolf-esque growl, a stark contrast to the intermingled country jazz and Tex-Mex folk ever-present. Almost bipolar with his songs of love lost and love gained, and depression and jubilance, it’s really a metaphor for life in a sense – the ups and downs of this 67-year-old road warrior of a troubadour.
And, yet, before we limit the genres to blues, country, and folk, we have soul in “I Feel A Change Comin’ On”. Dylan croons, “Well life is for love/And they say that love is blind/If you wanna live easy/Baby, pack your clothes with mine.” Yet again, Bob Dylan has this effortless ability to incorporate a wide range of styles and still produce a seminally unforced, organic album.
One thing we’ve come to expect from Dylan is a certain degree of existentialism in the vain of social commentary. Somewhere on this album has to be even a vague comment on the economic state of the country, and we get it with the final track, “It’s All Good”. Backed by the same blues shuffle style of “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’”, Dylan satirically grabs hold of modern-day urban slang to emphasize that, well, it’s really not all good and to say so is just one monumental dismissal of what needs to be addressed. “Politicians are tellin’ lies”, “Wives are leaving their husbands”, “Brick by brick they tear you down”, “People on the land/Some of them so sick/They can hardly stand”, “Everywhere you look there’s more misery”, and “Buildings are crumblin’” are just a few of the sentiments Dylan leaves us with as he closes out his latest record. He may not be addressing the Wall Street corporate establishment verbatim, but he is no doubt damning them for that laundry list of horrors they are wreaking on his country.
Pre-rock & roll rock & roll has been the focus of 2000-era Dylan, even so much as seeing his live show, which vaguely resembles his Highway 61 Revisited or Blonde On Blonde sound, favoring the sound that he and his backing band have come to embrace on their Never Ending Tour.
Relishing in his fully aged growl of a howl, Bob Dylan has become the wise old man that he so eagerly tried to be as a youth. Together Through Life is just that sort of record, the unforced unfettered wisdom of a man that has kept on walkin’.
Copyright © 2009 Clarity Digital Group LLC d/b/a Examiner.com.
Starting this article off is near impossible. I don’t know what to say about this man. Not enough can be said and not enough has been said. He is the one, the single most important individual in all of popular/rock & roll music. His words are fearlessly introspective and damningly aware. His compositions are bared souls, instrumentally explosive and emotionally rupturing. The man that has his own genre, a genre that knows no musical or lyrical bounds. Every album he puts out seems to null and void all the garbage that precedes and follows it in the same year.
Two days ago, Bob Dylan released his 33rd studio album entitled Together Through Life. Like "Love and Theft" and Modern Times before it, this album is a whirlwind, especially considering his co-writer on the album is Robert Hunter, lyricist of the late Jerry Garcia.
It begins with “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’”, a latin-infused blues diatribe of Dylan professing his love, beyond which lies nothing. It is somewhat reminiscent of the kickstart effect that “Thunder on the Mountain” had for Modern Times. The song introduces a vocal styling that has been developing over the last few albums: one that is worn, battered, and wise as is Dylan in his old age. The song follows a traditional 12-bar blues form that seems essential for the subject matter. The most shocking part of all, at least for me, is the accordion, played by David Hidalgo of Los Lobos – an instrument often associated with musical gimmicks. Yet, again, Dylan is able to compose true music out of lyrical and instrumental freedom.
We are brought down from that high with “Life Is Hard”, whose plucked depression joins a jazzy frontier backdrop. You can’t help but feel the lost love in Dylan’s voice as the guitars cry in high-note tremolo fashion. This is not the whining of a teenager trying to force maturity, this is the true-to-form despair of a man who is without purpose in this person’s absence. We’ve listened to Dylan write about his environment, but there’s just something special when his poetry is aimed at himself. It’s undeniably honest.
Heavily blues focused, the album continues with the slow chugging blues of “My Wife’s Home Town” in which Dylan lets us know full well the extent to which his lust for his wife drives him absolutely mad, a point driven home with the romantic input, “my love for her is all I know”. This comes amidst Dylan’s first economy-charged lines in “State gone broke/the county’s dry”, where he directs his audience not to engage in self-pity and hopelessness but to “keep on walkin’” and live with the one you love in mind, as he does. In fact, he may simply be saying that life is not life unless you’re together, through life.
With titles like “Forgetful Heart”, “Jolene”, “This Dream of You”, and “Shake Shake Mama”, the lyrical emphasis is blatant. “Jolene” and “Shake Shake Mama” particularly scream Chess Records-era blues with their Muddy Waters sound and Dylan’s Howlin’ Wolf-esque growl, a stark contrast to the intermingled country jazz and Tex-Mex folk ever-present. Almost bipolar with his songs of love lost and love gained, and depression and jubilance, it’s really a metaphor for life in a sense – the ups and downs of this 67-year-old road warrior of a troubadour.
And, yet, before we limit the genres to blues, country, and folk, we have soul in “I Feel A Change Comin’ On”. Dylan croons, “Well life is for love/And they say that love is blind/If you wanna live easy/Baby, pack your clothes with mine.” Yet again, Bob Dylan has this effortless ability to incorporate a wide range of styles and still produce a seminally unforced, organic album.
One thing we’ve come to expect from Dylan is a certain degree of existentialism in the vain of social commentary. Somewhere on this album has to be even a vague comment on the economic state of the country, and we get it with the final track, “It’s All Good”. Backed by the same blues shuffle style of “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’”, Dylan satirically grabs hold of modern-day urban slang to emphasize that, well, it’s really not all good and to say so is just one monumental dismissal of what needs to be addressed. “Politicians are tellin’ lies”, “Wives are leaving their husbands”, “Brick by brick they tear you down”, “People on the land/Some of them so sick/They can hardly stand”, “Everywhere you look there’s more misery”, and “Buildings are crumblin’” are just a few of the sentiments Dylan leaves us with as he closes out his latest record. He may not be addressing the Wall Street corporate establishment verbatim, but he is no doubt damning them for that laundry list of horrors they are wreaking on his country.
Pre-rock & roll rock & roll has been the focus of 2000-era Dylan, even so much as seeing his live show, which vaguely resembles his Highway 61 Revisited or Blonde On Blonde sound, favoring the sound that he and his backing band have come to embrace on their Never Ending Tour.
Relishing in his fully aged growl of a howl, Bob Dylan has become the wise old man that he so eagerly tried to be as a youth. Together Through Life is just that sort of record, the unforced unfettered wisdom of a man that has kept on walkin’.
Copyright © 2009 Clarity Digital Group LLC d/b/a Examiner.com.
