Bob Dylan - Modern Times (2006)

Modern Times clarifies the limits and attractions of Bob Dylan's song style by being incontestably well-written and well-played. Rolling Stone critic Joe Levy has given Modern Times the magazine's patented, yet always-questionable, "five-star masterpiece review" - the one it seems to reserve solely for those few icons who help sell Rolling Stone product. Elsewhere, the album is appearing regularly in television ads plastered with quotes from various reviewers noting the album's instant classic status. It doesn't hurt that the record debuted at number one on Billboard charts alongside some woefully awful product.

Dylan states, in an interview that runs along with the Rolling Stone record review, that his current band is the best he's ever had. It's hard to disagree. The musicians are exacting blues rock avatars. Drummer George Receli is steadfast and lithe suggesting that he could enter a blues-rock trance state if unfettered from Dylan's stylistic demands. Bass player Tony Garner is wondrously beautiful throughout and creates compelling moments of swooning sonority. The busy-bee guitar playing from Donnie Herron, Denny Freeman and Stu Kimball infuse and pace the Dylanisms with much grace and finesse. They are at once a good dance band, a good blues band, a good rock and roll band, and good idiosyncratic folk stylists for Dylan's weirder numbers.

As a lyricist, Dylan went for years without seeming all that interested. At worst he's been given to gibberish, redundant, one-idea, list songs, half-cooked narratives, and punch-the-clock banalities. The lyrics on Modern Times are spit-shined. Dylan's lyrics have never been closer to real poetry than they are here. Epiphanies pop up all over the place. Some favorites:

"I'm pale as a ghost
Holding a blossom on a stem
You ever seen a ghost. No.
But you have heard of them."

"In the still of the night, in the world's ancient light
Where wisdom grows up in strife;
My bewildered brain, toils in vain
Through the darkness on the pathways of life.

Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air
Tomorrow keeps turning around."

"She been cooking all day, it gonna take me all night
I can't eat all that stuff in a single bite."

"Put on your cat clothes, mama, put on your evening dress
Few more years of hard work, then there'll be a 1,000 years of happiness."

"Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches;
I'll recruit my army from the orphanages.
I been to St. Herman's church, said my religious vows.
I've sucked the milk out of a thousand cows."

The lyrics could fit almost anywhere among the tunes on Modern Times (the album's title is ironic - for Dylan, there are no modern times and the time frame shifts constantly throughout the narratives). Dylan is going for a rarefied idea on Modern Times - a summation of life in all it's changing/unchanging glory. Almost every song has a touch of life, a touch of death, fealty to a loved one, avarice for the same, understated pessimism about things current, understated optimism about things in general. Richard Thompson may have put it more succinctly: "Keep your grip on the dead man's handle, and your thoughts on the journey's end ;" but Dylan's elaborate wordplay is entertaining. The tour-de-force is "Ain't Talking." This 9 minute gem ends the record, and it is among the best Dylan has written. There isn't a single misstep in the 9 four-line stanzas, or the 9, subtly shifting, four-line choruses. Dylan's brooding persona is evoked in a dark, roving everyman creation that may express Dylan more completely than anything he's ever written. You can almost lay your hand on the protagonist's chest and feel the heat from his rabid heart. From the first lines:

"As I walked out tonight in the mystic garden
The wounded flowers were dangling from the vine
I was passing by yon cool crystal fountain
Someone hit me from behind."

He "ain't talkin', just walkin', eatin' hog eyed grease in a hog eyed town." There is a mission pursued here that has a vengeful intensity. Mystery, beauty and strife co-exist in an eternal thought process. Greek and Christian archetypes are enveloped in a warrior's weary gait - Jerry Garcia would have loved this song.

"If I catch my opponents ever sleeping
I'll just slaughter 'em where they lie."

"All my loyal and my much-loved companions
They approve of me and share my code.
I practice a faith that's been long abandoned.
Ain't no altars on this long and lonesome road."

"The sufferin' is unending -
Every nook and cranny has its tears."

Tone and mood are also consistent on "Someday Baby," a rewrite of an old blues tune that Dylan intensifies with well-spun lines: "I'm so hard pressed, my mind tied up in knots; I keep recycling the same old thoughts; I tried to be friendly, I tried to be kind; I'm gonna drive you from your home, just like I was driven from mine." The band is razor sharp here and it's a terse neo-traditional performance.

"When the Deal Goes Down" has lyrics that are loaded up with multiple meanings. Almost every line works as a triumvirate: offering a statement of faith in a higher power, while expressing a lover's fidelity, and offering general humanistic commiseration. Dylan has never been so sweet.

"Nettie Moore" uses time changes and place changes to make for an ostensibly confusing but generally cohesive statement about how only the loss of a love or a friendship may have any deep meaning amongst a life of general wrack, ruin, vice and redemption. The chorus is the only really good chorus on the record - stark, bold and full of empathy:

"Oh, I miss you, Nettie Moore
And my happiness is o'r.
Winter's gone, the river's on the rise
I loved you then, and ever shall
But there's no one left here to tell
The world has gone black before my eyes."

So if the form and content of a masterpiece seem to be arising from the scribbling on this page, why is it so hard putting this record on for a fifth or sixth spin? As good as Modern Times is - isn't it a little boring around the edges?

If Modern Times is a masterpiece, it is a contemplative masterpiece rather than an immersive masterpiece. At its contemplative best it's a good groove. But whenever it's a bit less than perfect all of Dylan's stylistic shortcomings rise to the surface. Look at the "Rolling and Tumbling" rewrite: if the character is truly as mean and disgusted as suggested by lines like "I'm flat out spent, this woman been drivin' me to tears; this woman so crazy, I swear I ain't gonna touch another one for years;" why is the tune brought to a carefree Hollywood ending with "Let's forgive each other darlin', go down to the greenwood glen; let's put our heads together now, let's put all old matters to an end." The playing is fine, but throughout Modern Times Dylan only allows room for breathers, not real instrumental breaks. Extended words preempt anything but moody blues backup.

As much as Dylan speaks about tradition and the traditionalists, he's not much of a traditionalist himself. Dylan is a artsy folk wordsmith. On Modern Times, Dylan is a successful post-modernist as jarring in his juxtapositions as Thomas Pynchon. But he is not a pop craftsman, an instrumental genius or an inspiring band leader. Nor is he incredibly melodic. The songs are long and repetitive - sometimes irritatingly so when matched with a plodding melody like "Beyond the Horizon." And when distracted, there isn't much to fall back on: not the leathery, yet wispy, vocals or the mono-intoned melodies. The pleasures of choruses and/or bridges are missing on many of the songs. The humor is dry; the fun is fleeting. There is no exploding combustion in the instrumentation - these are all sprawling concoctions that simmer nicely. "Workingman's Blues # 2" is so artsy it's practically inarticulate in it's aversion to reality based characterization. The off-hand manner of the chorus and the juxtaposition of Dylan sociology with Dylan non sequiturs more is art-house experimental and coldly academic. "Workingman's Blues # 2"doesn't want to be another anthem. And who'd want to sing it? The album opener, "Thunder on the Mountain," is the kind of facile lark that fades from memory once you recognize the witty purposelessness of the endeavor.

By the third or fourth time around the vibe is a little tiresome. Dylan has seldom been able to spice up his talents enough for a varied, multi-colored, expertly crafted, and emotionally effusive set of songs. He is a lop-sided artist. As such, Modern Times is about as good as it gets for Dylan. Though commendable, you might feel compelled to follow up a listen with something more baldly emotional. Alice Cooper maybe. Or the Bulgarian Women's Chorus. Still, Dylan seems to be joining the ranks of Cooper, Richard Thompson, Van Morrison, Ian Anderson and many others in a mature, on-going, and engaged reckoning with a productive muse. Not sure what took him so long - though in the Rolling Stone interview mentioned above, he blames producers.

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