Bob Dylan - Modern Times

Columbia 82876 87606 2

These days it has become de rigueur to proclaim Dylan’s genius, particularly in the mainstream media (witness the current cover of Rolling Stone for the latest example.) Since the 1997 release of Time Out of Mind, Dylan has won several Grammys, an Oscar, and has been honored by the Kennedy Center. His music has been featured on numerous film soundtracks, most notably 1999’s Wonder Boys, and has been praised by presidents and popes alike. Now he has his own popular radio show on XM Satellite, and his music and image are currently featured in the latest Ipod commercials. Critics have already rushed forward to declare his most recent release, Modern Times, another masterpiece.

Hold on a minute. When did Dylan become so popular? I started listening to his music in 1995, when Dylan was still said to be in the midst of a 20-year-old funk. In the wake of such dreadful albums as Empire Burlesque, Knocked Out Loaded, and Down in the Groove, he was considered a worn-out has-been with a frog-like voice and unintelligible delivery. To a large extent, all this was true, but nonetheless I fell in love with that voice, and for the next seven years, Dylan was all I listened to. I saw him in concert at least a dozen times, listened to every one of his albums (even the bad ‘80s stuff) until I knew the lyrics by heart, and assembled a large collection of bootleg material. During this period I also acquired what I later discovered to be unusual preferences in the Dylan catalog. I thought his widely-acclaimed mid-60s work, including the trio of albums Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde, was pretty good but basically overrated. I much preferred the work that followed it, particularly John Wesley Harding, The Basement Tapes, New Morning, Planet Waves, and of course Blood on the Tracks. The latter albums seemed much less pretentious to me, the lyrics simpler but conveying more wisdom and a wider range of emotion.

I tell you all this up front so you will know where I’m coming from when I evaluate Dylan’s music today. I was born in the period between the release of Desire and Street Legal, and first heard Dylan’s voice on that awful celeb-fest “We Are The World” in 1985. Dylan as ‘60s icon never appealed to me that much. As Dylan himself says in a recent interview, “I own the 60s. Who’s going to argue with me? I’ll give ‘em to you if you want ‘em.” Dylan, for me, is the embodiment of a modern-day jester, singing songs, drinking whiskey, and generally having a good time. His genius, if it exists, is his recognition that despite all the proclamations, he really isn’t a genius, and never has been.

This recognition, I think, is the source of his comeback. In the early ‘90s, Dylan, beset by a string of commercial failures, stopped trying to play the role of prophet and returned to his love for old-time blues and country music, territory which he first began exploring with the underrated Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong. To the delight of Greil Marcus, he continued walking this terrain with Time Out of Mind, a decent record which would have been a lot better if Daniel Lanois had not added his patented layer of glaze to the sound of Dylan’s voice, and then Love and Theft, the album that I still regard as Dylan’s best.

Despite the critical acclaim these albums engendered, there have been detractors, particularly those who believe Dylan’s greatness lies in the rapid fire lyricism of his mid-‘60s work. To these critics, today’s Dylan is just an old man who has lost his voice and now contents himself to sing songs about tobacco farmers, flooded levees, and lost loves. Such critics will not like Modern Times. Dylan’s voice is now so worn that it basically alternates between a growl and a purr. The musical material is your standard run-through of old-school country rock and sentimental balladry. The rhymes are hardly inventive; see, for instance, this from “Thunder on the Mountain”: “Feel like my soul is beginning to expand/Look into my heart and you will sort of understand/You brought me here, now/You’re trying to run me away/The writing on the wall/Come read it, see what it say.”

Yet despite all these limitations, or rather, because of them, the album succeeds. Above all else, Dylan is comfortable with this material, and he remains a master at interpreting the American songbook (for that is what the songs on Modern Times are, as most of the lyrics are likely cribbed from other songs and then reassembled by Dylan, as he did with Love and Theft). That said, Modern Times lacks the narrative inventiveness of its predecessor, as found in songs such as “Floater (Too Much To Ask)” and “Po’ Boy.” The sentimentality of much of the material also borders on the maudlin, particularly with the regrettable “Workingman’s Blues #2,” which features the lines “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.”

Such reservations aside, Modern Times is a worthy effort. Among others, “Nettie Moore” is likely to go down as one of the best songs from this period of Dylan’s career. More importantly, Dylan now sings like a man comfortable in his own skin. The days of revolution have passed, and Dylan knows it. “I’m so hard-pressed, my mind tied up in knots,” he sings on “Someday Baby,” “I keep recycling the same old thoughts.” That he does, but then, so do we all. As Dylan says, “We all wear the same thorny crown.” Modern Times is not a breakthrough album, nor will it startle you with its inventiveness. It’s the kind of music you put on while sitting on your front porch, sipping a rum and coke and staring out into the falling darkness. Perhaps a modest statement, but I think that is all Dylan is trying to achieve.

David Jones