The world according to Bob

Leaving the anthems behind, Dylan sticks to life as he knows it

Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

It's been nearly five years since Bob Dylan's last studio album, which was rather unnervingly released on Sept. 11, 2001. Love and Theft was a latter-day classic for Dylan that unintentionally captured the mood of the moment with urgent, apocalyptic songs such as High Water (for Charley Patton).

Modern Times could very well be called Love and Theft, Part II; Dylan draws from the same influences - old folk, '30s-styled ballads, '50s-era rave-ups - that made his 2001 album a breath of fresh air. In fact, that's the biggest flaw in Modern Times, due in stores today.

Lyrically, Dylan has a lot going on; there's more introspection on this album than any since Blood on the Tracks. However, too often those words are seemingly placed over musical templates that are uninspired - song structures we've heard before.

Perhaps Dylan's days of epics and anthems are truly over; among all the low-key tunes here you won't find Napoleon in rags or sharp swords in the hands of young children. Instead you get 10 ruminations on life and everything that goes with it.

Modern Times

Track 1: Thunder on the Mountain

• An exuberant kickoff to the album, Thunder on the Mountain is a slow-boiling blues boogie chronicling some sort of backroom high jinks that the lyrics leave ambiguous. Something's happening here, but you don't know what it is.

Track 2: Spirit on the Water

• A gentle love song more tender, playful and passionate than anything Dylan has written in years, with a gorgeous but subtle harmonica break at the end that nicely caps off the 7 1/2-minute song. Next time someone tells you Dylan can't sing, play this for them. When he chooses, he can sing a gorgeous tune, as he has in the past with Lay Lady Lay and Percy's Song.

Track 3: Rollin' and Tumblin'

• As close as the album gets to flat-out rocking, Rollin' and Tumblin' is a raucous six minutes of images on top of some tasteful guitar licks; it's the song that most breaks the mold of repetition that runs throughout the album, though fans will still find it very much in the vein of Honest With Me, from the last album. It also features some of Dylan's saltiest language: "Some young lazy slut has charmed away my brains."

Track 4: When the Deal Goes Down

• One of the more elegant songs on the album, it finds Dylan singing about faith, religion, regret, life, death and standing together when the odds are against you. "We live and we die / we know not why / but I'll be with you when the deal goes down."

Track 5: Someday Baby

• A crisp little rocker that might remind fans of Dylan's classic Highway 61 Revisited sound combined with a John Lee Hooker blues sensibility. Someday Baby sounds live in the studio, with wide stereo separation on the guitar that helps give it that old-school sound.

Track 6: Workingman's Blues #2

• One of the most touching songs on the album. Dylan sings of the hard times facing working-class people in a new economic world that he thinks is leaving them behind. Perhaps only Dylan can sing of the global economy and make it sound romantic: "The place I love best is a sweet memory / it's a new path that we trod / they say low wages are reality if we want to compete abroad."

Track 7: Beyond the Horizon

• Another of Dylan's '30s-sounding period pieces, where he sings that beyond the horizon love and happiness wait for everyone. It's the least inspired piece on the album, a rare turn into platitudes among otherwise-sharp writing.

Track 8: Nettie Moore

• After his health concerns a few years back, it's more tempting than ever to read a sense of urgency and openness into his lyrics. Nettie Moore combines a sense that time is running short with a desire to seize the moment with tenderness. "I've got a pile of sins to pay for and I ain't got time to hide / I'd walk though a blazing fire, baby, if I knew you was on the other side."

Track 9: The Levee's Gonna Break

• Fans who had high hopes of Dylan being topical on this album will be disappointed. The Levee's Gonna Break is all over the map lyrically, going from images of people fleeing with everything they own to "I woke up this morning to buttered eggs in my bed." The atonal one-note "riff" that anchors the song is grating and tired at the same time. It's a tuneless affair that should have been left off.

Track 10: Ain't Talkin'

• The epic album-closer comes closest to the apocalyptic doom hinted at in High Water, from Love and Theft; for nearly nine minutes, Dylan contemplates his enemies, the world's end and his role in it all: "I try to love my neighbor and do good unto others / but, oh mother, things ain't going well."

Bob Dylan

Modern Times

Columbia Records

• Grade: B+

Mark Brown is the popular music critic. Brownm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2674