Friday August 25, 2006
Digging on Dylan
By AZMYL YUNOR
So we’ve arrived at Dylan’s 44th album Modern Times (third in nine years).
I’m supposing the fact that the title is ironic rather than iconic: ”modern” could very much be the one thing that Dylan has pitted himself against in every song he’s written through the decades and any contemporary analysis of the man, the myth and his songs has to be a paradox of sorts to what we loosely term as “modern life”.
This is a man who is dedicated to his craft and he continues relishing and moving on with his Never Ending Tour (which started back in about 1989).
Unlike 2001’s more muscular and driving Love and Theft (the title referencing a novel about the history of minstrelsy in the Americas), the latest by Dylan is a looser and rollicking affair.
 |
In his new album Modern Times, iconic rocker Bob Dylan continues his ruminations on God, love, mortality and the state of humanity. |
As much as this may be Dylan’s own ruminations on love and the open road, the slight change in pace is also a result of the new backing band’s chemistry. It features drummer George Receli, lead guitarist Stu Kimball, guitarist Denny Freeman and violinist/guitarist Don Herron. Only bassist Tony Garnier has remained faithful in Dylan’s backing band since 1989 and cradles the rhythm section justly as always.
As a result of this ever-evolving chemistry, Dylan’s songs on Modern Times reveal a layer of him that looks back at past travels with a new-found lightness. He relishes the glee of age minus the sepia-tinted nostalgia that often plagues artistes who look back at paths travelled at his age. In this sense, Dylan as a songwriter is ageless.
The 65-year-old’s search for salvation hasn’t ceased: in fact, it predominates a majority of the songs on Modern Times and the last two albums sort of pre-dates that search (one can even view it as a trilogy of sorts, itself a modern condition).
God, faith, mortality and love are still central motifs since 1997’s swampy Time Out Of Mind. But what sets these songs aside from the last two albums is the doggedness of the characters to move on by greasing the rusty wheels of regret and kicking the mule of mortal thoughts squarely where it matters.
Thunder On The Mountain lifts off where Love and Theft left off. He addresses a (potential?) lost lover with a confidence of a man who’s got a good grasp on the art living to the fore. “She ain’t no angel and so am I,” he rasps.
The neo-domestic ragtime delight of Spirit On The Water and Beyond The Horizon begs for open windows on humid nights, be it car or house windows. Here is where love is a dynamic yet ungraspable force.
“You ever seen a ghost, no? But you’ve heard of them,” he inquires a lover in Spirit On The Water.
Rollin’ and Tumblin and Someday Baby are pretty much a re-interpretation of old blues numbers (similar to a majority of Love and Theft) that is quite literal in its backbeat and blues guitar licks. These tracks summon out amongst others the ghost of Delta blues doyens Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson.
“I laugh and I cry and I’m haunted by ? things I never meant or wished to say,” he laments on When The Deal Goes Down but not without a glint in his eye. While “we all wear the same thorny crown”, he insists that “we learn to live and then we forgive.” Some semblance of redemption does indeed exist in loyalty regardless of the strife.
Workingman’s Blues #2 recalls the minor-key observations of Americana by Dylan in his band-backed days.
It doesn’t take a keen ear to catch on the couplet message of “the buying power of the proletariats have gone down, the money’s getting shallow and weak?well, the place I love best is a sweet memory and the new path that we trawl.” Nothing’s changed really with the new economic order. We’ve ‘progressed’ into modern times yet the realities of the blue collar life are just as stark, only dressed up in different clothes.
The affluence of historical context with the present make Nettie Moore an interesting folk-narrative piece filled with man’s insights. “The world of research has gone berserk, too much paperwork ? I’m beginning to believe what the scriptures tell.” Blind faith may be the answer for a man who feels the shades of mortality, it seems.
References to New Orleans aside; The Levee’s Gonna Break is probably the weakest song on Modern Times possibly because it’s a territory Dylan and company have straddled upon before. Playing on oft-used metaphors hardly seem to reveal more within, but this tune remains a good toe-tapping number.
The piano strains in the intro of the epic nine-minute long Ain’t Talkin’ harks back to Highway 61’s Ballad Of A Thin Man. This song might be an update of that central character itself: the man who once told Mr Jones that he didn’t have a clue what was going on is now knowing too much too soon.
Modern Times finds Dylan steady again at the peak of his muse both as a journeyman plying his trade and as a songster who lives by and within the songs he churns.
Here’s a man drawing parallels between the music that he drew upon and where it has lead and informed him. “I practice a faith that’s been long abandoned,” he quips at the album’s end.
Musically, Dylan’s current classicist path may be lit by the blues and balladry torch left behind by the generations before. But philosophically, he is conflicted as ever by the human condition and its paradoxes.
The highways may be endless but the journey is the destination; don’t look back or ahead, just be. Carry on, pilgrim.
Bob Dylan’s Modern Times will be released by SonyBMG on Aug 29.
Azmyl Yunor is a Klang Valley-based folk rock singer-songwriter and co-founder of the Troubadours Enterprise. For more info, browse www.myspace.com/azmyl yunor or www.troubadourskl.blogspot.com.
RSS
