Modern Times (2006)

Shortly after the release of Modern Times, I saw an interview with Dylan where it was suggested to him that his new LP could be seen as part three of a trilogy that began with Time Out Of Mind. Dylan denied this - as you'd expect if you'd actually listened to the albums recently - but conceded that if it was part of a trilogy it would only be a part two to "Love And Theft"'s part one. 

You can see it. Modern Times and "Love And Theft" are, stylistically, peas in a pod. Producer Dylan, aka Jack Frost has done a bang-up job again, keeping the sound uncluttered, the Never Ending Tour regulars are employed once more as the backing band and the songwriting relies heavily on the same mixture of twelve bar blues and vintage sounding melodies. Perhaps because of the familiarity of the sound throughout the album and the fact it comes straight after "Love And Theft" (albeit five years after), I don't think I would rate it quite a high as its predecessor but that is just splitting hairs as this is still a quality LP. 

Track one. Thunder On The Mountain. Just as on the last album we get going with a straightforward rock and roll 12 bar blues progressions. Hardly groundbreaking but well executed and enjoyable nonetheless with a, frankly startling, shout-out to "R&B" songstress Alicia Keys in verse two. Dylan's penchant for the 12 bar blues forms the backbone of the LP with tracks one, three (Rollin' and Tumblin'), five (Someday Baby) and seven (The Levee's Gonna Break) all based firmly on that same template. We are only saved by Beyond The Horizon coming at track seven from having all odd numbered tracks conforming to the same format. They are all good, jump-up, rock and roll numbers (although the vocal on The Levee's Gonna Break always sounds a touch bored to me).  

They are not, however, great, knock-your-socks-off Dylan classics and, for that reason, I rate this as half a good LP and half a great one. And, conveniently, those two halves are neatly divided into odd and even tracks. Because it is on songs two, four, six, eight and ten that Modern Times really excels. 

Spirit On The Water, a soft-shoe shuffle, reminiscent of Moonlight, framing a lovely delivery of a lovely melody. In fact it is Dylan's gentle delivery that makes the song. I love the lyrics here but replicating them on the page makes them appear facile:

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

or

I wanna be with you in paradise
And it seems so unfair
I can't go to paradise no more
I killed a man back there

Sounds as million times better on the record.

It is a beautiful song and just as delightful is track four, the 3/4 time, When The Deal Goes Down, as, indeed is track six Workingman's Blues #2 and, for the love of Bob, track eight, the pouding, mournful, Ain't Talkin'. Each of them are some of the most gentle, lovely songs that Dylan has produced ever - yes, ever - and delivered with a subtlety the years have given him. I adore these songs.

So I'm up and ready to give this LP only a scratch under 5 out of 5 not because it is perfect but because the heights it hits are so high and the lows are pretty damn high as well. But, let's hold on for a moment, because there is an elephant in the room and it needs to be dealt with.

Do we call it a controversy over the credits or do we stop pussy-footing around and say that accusations of plagiarism have reared their head again? Whatever, we are back to the issues we chewed over when listening to The Freewheelin'. And despite whichever conclusion we reach on this, it has to be acknowledged that Bob borrowed an awful lot of stuff to make the songs on this album. The only question is whether it matters and whether he crossed some sort of line by claiming 'All songs by Bob Dylan'.

When it was first brought to my attention that Dylan's Rollin' and Tumblin' was remarkably simliar to Muddy Waters' recording song of the same name; When The Deal Goes Down sounds a great deal like the Bing Crosby classic When The Blue Of The Night (Meets The Gold Of The Day); Beyond The Horizon is very much like the 1935 Kennedy and Williams penned tune Red Sails In The Sunset (recorded by pretty much every crooner and more); and Ain't Talkin' bears an uncanny resemblance to a slowed down version of The Stanley Brothers' Highway Of Regret, I was intrigued. So I employed Spotify to have a listen and, god damn, they are all pretty similar. Add to that the fact that Bob has borrowed liberally from poets Ovid and Henry Timrod as well as from other sources for his lyrics.

This bothered me for a while but, the more I've listened, the less it has until I've reached the point that I wholeheartedly agree with Robert Polito of the Poetry Foundation (credit wikipedia here) who said that accusations of plagiarism confuse "art with a term paper".

If you can bear with me, let us take them one by one. Rollin' and Tumblin' - yes, it sounds an awful lot like the Muddy Waters' recording and the lyrics in the first verse are the same but this is an old blues tune that stretched way back with countless singers adding their own take - though quite regularly keeping the same first verse. The first recorded version we know of is by Hambone Willie Newborn in 1929 but there are good indications it has older antecedents. It's a song that's been passed along with each adding their own, as Dylan has, and the lack of a 'trad' credit is a common blues tradition - see Waters' and Elmore James' recordings of it also.

I've more of a problem with Beyond The Horizon. There's a decent case to be made that some sort of credit should have been given to Kennedy and Williams for the melody (though not the lyrics) but that's about as far as I'd go. The same can also be said of When The Deal Goes Down. But it also has to be acknowledged that Dylan never tried to hide this way of working; in one interview just before Modern Times he ruminated on the fact that he was currently writing a song based on an old Bing Crosby melody. Hardly the thief in the night and these are well known songs. The key question here is: are they different songs? And, after much listening and comparison the answer is, definitely, yes.

Ain't Talkin' is like a slowed down Highway Of Regret but the genesis of that tune is lost in the midst of time. A case for 'Trad arr.' but no more. And as for the odd line or two popping up from old poets, I refer the honourable gentleman to Robert Polito' view. If Dylan was trying to steal and pull the wool over our eyes, it is doubtful that he would take from Ovid's The Art Of Love and then, in the very first track, sing :

I've been sitting down studying the art of love

I'll give you that there is a case for a few credits to be tweaked but this is just the folk tradition on taking old tunes and turning them into your own. I've no problem with this at all.

Right?

Right.

Putting all that Kerfuffle aside, this is a damn fine album and no mistaking.

Out of five?

Four and seven eighths.

Favourite track?

Workingman's Blues #2

Up next?

Together Through Life.

"Love And Theft" (2001)

I'd forgotten how much I love this album. When it was first released it sat on the CD player (it was the first Dylan release after I had given up on my refusal to accept that this new-fanged technology was perhaps not the work on the devil and might actually have something going for it - even though it was still a million times less satisfying than vinyl) in a state of near-permanence and became the regular soundtrack to the late-night, low-stakes poker games I found myself hosting at the time. And while I remembered it fondly for its connection to happy times, I hadn't actually given it a spin for a while. 

So out it came, on it went and I found myself reunited with an old friend. 

First up , Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Not Dylan's finest title for an opener and not the greatest number on the LP but still an immensely satisfying start (and a surprisingly dark ending to the song given the the child-like title). The thing that strikes you instantly is the sound. After the muddiness of Time Out Of Mind, there is a welcome clarity here. The songwriting aside, the key strength of the album is that it sounds like a band. Not surprisingly given that Dylan used his Never Ending Tour regulars Larry Campbell, Charlie Sexton, Tony Garnier and David Kemper for the recording. The unmistakable feel here is of quality musicians who know how to operate as a unit and Dylan sounds as comfortable with them as you would expect. On top of that, the vocal performance is as good as anything we've had since Blood On The Tracks. Each and every song is delivered perfectly. It is a mammoth performance from the old troubadour. 

So kudos to producer Jack Frost... aka Bob Dylan. If you've read any of this blog you'll know I've had a problem with Dylan's attempts to self-produce over the years. It seemed that to get his very best work he needed another hand on the tiller to rein him in, whether it be Tom Wilson, Bob Johnston or Daniel Lanois. When left to his own devices, things got far too messy. But here, praise the Lord, Dylan comes into his own, keeping it simple, clean - far more restrained than the Lanois produced previous LP and all the better for that. 

Tweedle Dee fades out. An encouraging start - an enjoyable enough tune performed with panache. But then, track two, comes Mississippi. Oh my. A staggeringly good song. Dylan at his finest. What's not to admire? A beautiful drifter's tale musically gentle, touchingly delivered and lyrically effortless:

City’s just a jungle; more games to play

Trapped in the heart of it, tryin' to get away
I was raised in the country

I been workin’ in the town
I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down

A latter day Dylan classic.

Mississippi might be the pinnacle but throughout "Love And Theft" Dylan gives us a lyrical masterclass. Each track is lyrically as tight as you like, travelling across the country, often dealing with dark material but frequently funny and with fictional and historical figures popping up as it takes his fancy. This is songwriting of the highest order.

Track three. Summer Days. On the face of it a non-nonsense, straightforward 12 bar blues progression, rock and roll number. Here is a good time to stop and talk about this for a second because by this point Dylan is regularly returning to this most simple of all structures (or slight variations on) for many songs. And over the next couple of albums it is going to get even more common. On this album alone Summer Days, Lonesome Day Blues, Honest With Me, Tweedle Dee and Cry A While are either straight out of the 12 bar blues progression handbook or near as dammit. Should this use of formula bother me? Does it? No and definitely no. Not to this point anyway. What matters is how they are done: is the performance good, is the vocal delivery special, is the song worked around the framework in an interesting or inventive way and do the lyrics hold up? On all of these counts each of the songs, on this LP anyway, hit the mark. Summer Days is the best example. A storming performance from Dylan and his band and lyrically joyful. Not only does he throw in (away?) lovely little gems:

She’s looking into my eyes, she’s holding my hand
She’s looking into my eyes, she’s holding my hand
She says, “You can’t repeat the past.” I say, “You can’t? What do you mean,

you can’t? Of course you can."

but then knocks you down with something as meaty as:

Politician got on his jogging shoes
He must be running for office, got no time to lose
He been suckin’ the blood out of the genius of generosity
You been rolling your eyes—you been teasing me.

"Suckin' the blood out of the genius of generosity" for heaven's sake. Wonderful.

[Later addition: It has been drawn to my attention that this is not original Dylan, rather a slight variation on a line from a speech by Abraham Lincoln concerning drunkeness: "The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and generosity". Dylan the magpie at work again. Still, it is a damn fine adaptation of the phrase.]

For the sake of space and your sanity I shall refrain from delving in to each and every song, suffice to say the standard never drops, whether it be Floater, High Water, Honest With Me or Cry A While, all top, top tunes.

Worth a special mention, though, are Moonlight and Po' Boy. On both of these Dylan reaches for a sound with its feet in somewhere around the 1920s. Both, but particularly Moonlight, have the feel of a soft-shoe shuffle befitting the sharply suited, bootlace tie wearer that Dylan has become. Lyrically Po' Boy is a delight; touching, funny and even contains a knock knock joke. A knock knock joke! Huzzah.

As so often over the last ten LPs or so, Dylan ends the record with a sudden shift of gear. Here he leaves us with the solemn Sugar Baby. It is perhaps an odd choice for an ending but it works. 

Your charms have broken many a heart and mine is surely one
You got a way of tearing the world apart. Love, see what you done
Just as sure as we’re living, just as sure as you’re born
Look up, look up—seek your Maker—’fore Gabriel blows his horn

It is a beautiful song and, anyway, if it is too down-beat an end for you, Tweedle Dee is just a push of a button away.

A fine LP, up there with the best of his work. Love it.

Out of five?

Five

Favourite track?

Mississippi (with Po' Boy running a close second)

Up next?

Modern Times.