When Bob Dylan released Modern Times in August of 2006, it was his first album release since 2001’s Love and Theft. But if anyone has earned the right to wait a while between releases, it’s Dylan. Arguably, only the Beatles have had more influence on modern music. No American artist even comes close to Dylan’s vaulted cultural status of hero-troubadour. But Dylan’s no slack - he’s never content to rest on his laurels. And this time around, he seemed to know that if you’re going to wait five years to release an album, it had better be good.
Modern Times is good. More than that — great. By year’s end, this album had earned top honors on almost every critic’s year-end, best-of list. This is no small feat for any artist, but for the 65-year-old Dylan, it’s a particularly surprising triumph. Throughout his career, he has written music from the sublime to the unremarkable. And his recent willingness to sell his soul to corporate America (most notably in a Victoria’s Secret campaign) left many wondering if perhaps Dylan was past his prime.
It’s natural to be a little skeptical that a 65-year-old icon of the admittedly-old-fashioned genre of folk music could still be relevant in today's music market. And Dylan’s voice, which was never mellifluous, is considerably worse for decades of cigarettes.
But from the moment Modern Times comes through the headphones, Dylan re-asserts his position as American music royalty. The album is not only relevant in today‘s music market, it is trailblazing, expertly combining a wide variety of American roots music - jazz, folk, blues, gospel, R&B, even traditional Hawaiian. Dylan is an artist who has always been adept at reinterpreting traditional forms, and he puts those skills to good use here. His genius is in his ability to blend all of these styles into a coherent sound that is undeniably “Dylan.“
As a whole, it's just beautiful to listen to. The tone of the album is soft and sweet and largely acoustic. (As such, it is reminiscent of his 1975 masterpiece, Blood on the Tracks.) The timbre of the album is warm like honey, Dylan's voice sounds astonishingly good and the lyrics tend toward the personal rather than political - in lines like “ I’ve been trampling through mud,/praying to the powers above/ I’m sweating blood/You’ve got a face that begs for love,” (“Spirit on the Water,”) he shows a surprisingly vulnerable side of himself.
The album opens with the bouncy “Thunder on the Mountain" (which unexpectedly references a slight obsession with Alicia Keys.) All the hallmark elements of the Dylan sound are here - acoustic guitars, loose keyboard arrangements, multiple verses of real-world poetry. And yet when the electric guitar solos start, the sound is as much raw, 1950s rock and roll as it is “new folk.”
No matter the category, the warmth of the sound shines through. From there, the album changes tone to the sweet, tiki-tinged love song “Spirit on the Water,“ where the Hawaiian influence meets a loose jazz progression. “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” is a fairly straightforward blues tune, borrowing much from blues legends like Muddy Waters and Leadbelly, and folk ballad “When the Deal Goes Down” announces its intentions in 3/4 time like a cowboy ballad.
Although the subject matter of Modern Times is generally softer and more intimate, Dylan proves he can still make a statement on songs like “Workingman’s Blues #2” (“They say lower wages are reality if we want to compete abroad”) and “The Levee’s Gonna Break” (“Some of these people are gonna strip you of all you can take.”) But even these songs ultimately point to the redemptive value of love, a theme that runs throughout the album.
Above all, Modern Times reveals a portrait of the artist as sweeter, softer, and more human than we’ve ever seen him before - and yet still very much a musical genius.
"Modern Times" is on sale August 29, 2006 from Sony.
