Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 27/08/06
Label: Columbia

Dylan fans should consider themselves spoiled. Lying dormant for decades - an album every few years, most of them patchy - they've heard much from Sir Bob recently. The Martin Scorsese-directed "No Direction Home" for one, with its first-hand tales of growing up in Minnesota, Greenwich Village and beyond (as well as some jaw-dropping live footage). Then there was the autobiography "Chronicles" - hilarious, matter-of-fact, insightful - and even a weekly radio show. Who would have thought it? A reclusive enigma for much of the '80s and '90s, this newly revitalised Bob reinvents himself as a DJ and spins an hours worth of tunes about the weather. Well, he did once refer to himself as a "song and dance man".

With his stock so high, the release of a new Dylan album has, once again, become an 'event'. With a capital E. Expectation weighs heavy and, in these troubled times, you sense that a generation of baby boomers are turning to Bob for answers. Just like the old days. This is particularly so with regards to the media, who make a habit of hanging onto Dylan's every word and, like it was some sort of rock'n'roll "Da Vinci Code", search for hidden truth in his every utterance. Ironically, it was just this sort of fanatical behaviour that sent him scampering off to Woodstock and 'early retirement' in 1967.

These factors make "Modern Times", only Dylan's third album in ten years, exceedingly difficult to judge. If this were a new artist, without the weight of history upon his shoulders, you wonder how we would perceive it. An elderly man with a nasally whine? A collection of country blues standards? Would critics really spend hours digesting it, looking for its deeper meaning?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Although you sense that the man himself really couldn't give two stuffs about such matters and simply gets on with the task in hand. Certainly, in terms of music, "Modern Times" is a no-nonsense continuation of 1997's "Time Out Of Mind" and 2001's "Love & Theft": Dylan's band strike up a riff, lock into it six minutes or so, and their leader freeforms over the top. Occasionally, such as on opener "Thunder On The Mountain", the blueprint is unremarkable; the sound of a bar band going through the motions, and only the jarring reference to Alicia Keys proving notable. At such moments, and there are several here, the uninitiated would be wondering what all the fuss was about.

However, at other points, when the tempo slows to a stately waltz, proceedings truly enter the zone. "Spirit Of The Water" and "Nettie More" in particular are enormously affecting, while frequent references to water, disaster and a world gone mad allude to New Orleans (specifically on "The Levee's Gonna Break"). "Working Man Blues #2", even makes reference to "the buying power of the proletariat".

Dylan being Dylan, there is also plenty of the oblique and the personal, but this is still his most political album since 1964. Compared to the sledgehammer of, say Neil Young's "Living With War", it treads that line with subtly and grace. And while no "Blood On The Tracks", "Blonde On Blonde" (or even "Nashville Skyline") "Modern Times" offers further evidence that this man remains more than capable of greatness.

    by Adam Webb